Re: [Boost-users] Need boost's help with poor design

From: Steven Watanabe (watanabesj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-28 20:26:08

AMDG

Robert Dailey wrote:
> The problem is that the type of the packet is not known until runtime. 
> This makes it very difficult to make things "type safe" at compile 
> time. What Steven has presented is about as type-safe as you can make 
> it. However, the system does not prevent you from mismatching ID's 
> with actual packet types, but that's just a natural problem with data 
> driven designs.
You could put the ID in the base Packet type.  That should minimize the 
chances of mismatch.
> Right now there is no possible way to have a factory that returns the 
> original type of the packet, since what is being passed in (the ID) is 
> not known at compile time, as I've already stated.
It seems like a problem in multiple dispatching, which C++ just doesn't 
support very well natively.

In Christ,
Steven Watanabe