Re: [Boost-users] [tuple] [serialization] serialize a tuple

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [tuple] [serialization] serialize a tuple
From: Nick Edmonds (ngedmond_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-08-24 16:38:06

On Aug 24, 2009, at 2:23 PM, Dmitry Vinogradov wrote:

> Stefan Strasser wrote:
>> Am Monday 24 August 2009 18:13:02 schrieb Dmitry Vinogradov:
>>> How to serialize a tuple?
>>> Where are no boost/serialization/tuple.hpp, nor
>>> boost/tuple/tuple_serialization.hpp...
>> if there is no builtin support for tuple (I don't know), have look  
>> at the serialization function of std::pair in  serialization/ 
>> utility.hpp to see how it's done.
>> or in the documentation under "free function".
>
> Thanks, I'll do it by myself.
> BTW, do you know the reason why tuple serialization is missing in  
> the Boost library?

IIRC the reason is (was?) that Boost.Tuple is implemented using a cons- 
list and can be most efficiently serialized using this implementation  
detail.  Serializing any TR1-compatible tuple implementation means  
that you'd need to build around the get<N> templates, which is more  
work for the compiler.  Alternately you can do a bunch of fancy  
Boost.Preprocessor tricks to make both work, but that seems like a lot  
of work.  That being said, I'm all for adding support to  
Boost.Serialization for serializing Boost.Tuple even if it does use  
knowledge of the cons-list implementation, it would allow me to remove  
my own implementation of serialization for Boost.Tuple from quite a  
few projects.

Of course boost::fusion::tuple provides tuple_size< >, which makes  
serializing it really easy, so maybe switching to boost::fusion::tuple  
is the easiest (best?) approach.

-Nick