On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:14:19 -0400, "Beman Dawes"
String-algo : Interested, but concern over interface and choice of functions, generic vs basic_string.5.3 separate proposal
Any details on this? I love this library, and I would love to see it standardized in some form. Overall I've found the interface and function choices to be excellent (and I'd love to see even more), and I love that it's generic and not limited to basic_string. I use it on vectors and other containers for different kinds of network protocol parsing.
Thorsten Ottosen acted as champion for the paper, but I'll try to recall the discussion.
There concern was that at least some of the algorithms were only useful in the context of strings, and so it would be an over-generalization to supply them as free algorithms.
One way to counter that argument would be to identify the functions you have found useful on other containers, and to provide some use cases to buttress the argument.
Well, one thing I use it for is parsing HTTP directly in the read buffer, which is a vector. If the interfaces weren't generic, I'd either have to write my own functions to duplicate the functionality, or I'd have to copy the incoming data to a string. The first seems silly, and the latter would have unacceptable overhead in my case. The HTTP I'm parsing is streaming video from several dozen cameras at once, so I have to work with the buffers directly. I also use this library on plain old C strings, which wouldn't be possible if it were locked to basic_string. Some changes may make sense, but I really like the way it is now. -- Be seeing you.