[Boost-users] Re: Two issues with lexical_cast

Come to think of it, it can be done simpler and clearer, and avoiding any extra includes, like this:

namespace detail { template<class T> struct array_to_pointer_decay { typedef T type; };

template struct array_to_pointer_decay { typedef const T * type; }; }

template Target lexical_cast(const Source &arg) { typedef typename detail::array_to_pointer_decay<Source>::type NewSource;

detail::lexical_stream interpreter; Target result;

if(!(interpreter << arg && interpreter >> result)) throw_exception(bad_lexical_cast(typeid(NewSource), typeid(Target))); return result; }

I haven't tried it, but I have a feeling that it will work for string literals, but not for c-string variables, so another specialization might be needed. But it shouldn't be too hard to add, so no real problem here. Or maybe c-string variables aren't supposed to be supported anyway?

This requires support for partial specialisation, but so does remove_bounds used in the first suggestion, so it doesn't change the compiler requirements. Besides, the current version of lexical_cast in CVS doesn't work with MSVC 6, anyway. Of course, if this was very important, I guess it would be possible to fall back to pass by value for MSVC 6, and possibly fix other problems with it. I also see that MSVC 6 is no longer part of the Boost regression test.

Do you mean that boost has finally dropped support for MSVC 6? Congratulations, it's about time... :-) Anyway, the above solution looks excellent to me.