Re: charconv for C++11

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-05-11 16:45:36

On 5/11/23 7:40 AM, Matt Borland via Boost wrote:
>> How is this different from boost lexical cast?
> 
> Robert,
> 
> Charconv has a much smaller scope than lexical cast. 

We convert character arrays into built-in arithmetic types and vice 
versa. That’s it.

I believe that this is what lexical_cast does.  It might be different in 
that other than using arrays it uses strings.

Since it has such a narrow scope we can heavily optimize these conversions,

Honestly, I don't see how the scope is that much narrower than lexical_cast.

  which we have sunk a lot of time and effort into.

I presume you're referring to charconv and not lexical_cast here.  I 
don't question anyone's commitment, motives or competence in their 
efforts to contributing to boost.  But this is not in itself an argument 
for accepting or rejecting a boost library submission.

Thinking ahead a little bit, I'd have the following questions which 
might be brought up were such a component come up for review.

a) How is this different from boost lexical cast? 
https://theboostcpplibraries.com/boost.lexical_cast.
b) What will be the difference in user experience?
c) if it's very similar, why wouldn't it be better to just 
enhance/refine/improve/correct lexical_cast itself?
d) lexical cast uses an implementation strategy of leveraging C++ 
standard io library.  This is a header only library which presumably, 
results in code highly optimized at compile time. Also it doesn't add 
any dependencies other than the standard library itself.  Of course this 
optimization and hence performance will vary from one standard 
library/compiler implementation to another. But the same question 
applies to code written from scratch.

Robert Ramey

> 
> Matt
> 
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