[Boost-users] Re: Re: Feature request for boost::filesystem

From: Keith MacDonald (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-02 03:49:28

I have an MP3 player with a 40G hard drive, which puts your concerns about a
2.4G library into perspective. That's got to be a secondary issue, compared
with the requirements for convenience and functionality, when designing a
library.

Regarding the overhead of narrow to wide conversion, that's what any Windows
app suffers, every time it calls a Win32 API with a narrow string parameter.
Inside the kernel, everything is in Unicode (ignoring Win9x/ME).

- Keith MacDonald

"Vladimir Prus" <ghost_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:cc327o$irp$2_at_sea.gmane.org...
> Edward Diener wrote:
>
> >> 1. Make the library interface templated.
> >> 2. Use narrow classes: e.g. string
> >> 3. Use wide classes: e.g. wstring
> >> 4. Have some class which works with ascii and unicode.
> >>
> >> The first approach is bad for code size reasons. If the library does
> >> substantial work (e.g. HTTP library), it better be dynamic library,
> >> so that applications don't have include all the code. Of course, you
> >> might want static linking, but dynamic linking should be possible too.
> >
> > One could quite easily provide separate libraries for different
character
> > types, if a library was necessary in the first place.
>
> Yea, but whether as two separate file or one file, the size is still twice
> as large. E.g. if on a typical Linux system, just one application uses
wide
> version, you have to install both wide and narrow version. Here on my box,
> the size of /usr/lib in 1.2G. Making it into 2.4G does not seem right ;-)
>
> - Volodya