Re: Boost.Buffers: network-agnostic buffer types and algorithms

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-01-28 04:18:42

Klemens Morgenstern wrote:
> Additionally, I feel some need for a library managing raw memory. It's quite
> common to just use vector<unsigned char>, but I find this incorrect, because
> it's typed. Raw memory doesn't have a type, which is why malloc returns
> void* and not unsigned char*.

Raw memory bytes do have a type, and it's `unsigned char`.

> Thus a container type for a chunk of raw memory should also be included.
> I.e. something akin to a vector<void> if you will. Or like `bytes` in python.

You can in principle use std::byte for this, which is why it was added. Of course
they had to ruin it by adding operations to it.