2010/6/22 Nat Goodspeed :

For "interesting," consider also Spirit Qi. The ability to write a parser in (a close approximation of) BNF inline in your C++ source definitely stretched my sense of what's possible with the language.

I think that's a good idea. Most students are completely fed up with flex & bison, so such an alternative to write parsers would be really appreciated. -- José Tomás Tocino García

I'd put a vote in for Boost::any. Another very simple, incredibly useful library. Serialization would be good too, but it might be a bit big for an intro course. Depends how exprienced your audience is. Damien On 22/06/2010 3:02 PM, Andrew Holden wrote:

On Tuesday, June 22, 2010 3:42 PM, José Tomás Tocino García wrote:

...

Hi, I'm going to be teaching a four hours workshop about getting started with Boost, and I'm wondering which libraries would be the most representative and interesting to show.

My top pick would have to be multi-index. It's just so _useful_ once you wrap your brain around it.

Another good one to mention is numeric_cast. It shouldn't need much time as it's really simple, but its error checking has actually helped me catch some really embarrassing errors that would have been nearly impossible to find otherwise. _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

If I was being introduced to boost for the first time, I would appreciated seeing the following topics presented: shared_ptr and other smart pointers tuples bind and lambda (just a little subset of what is possible) enable_if (and overview of SFINAE) function multi_index (some simple subset of it) variant and any (and their differences) ref (with a couple of examples where it is useful) type_traits (just so to show that something like this exists) possibly a little bit of regex possibly a little of threads I think that these form a basis for other libraries, and once they understand them, they would be able to go and explore other boost libraries on their own. Good luck. On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Bronek Kozicki wrote:

On 22/06/2010 20:41, José Tomás Tocino García wrote:

...

So far, the libraries I'm sure I'm going to teach are: smart pointers, lexical_cast, bind and function, ref, hash and unordered containers.

program options are quite useful, I would also add optional.

B. _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

shared_ptr and other smart pointers tuples bind and lambda (just a little subset of what is possible) enable_if (and overview of SFINAE) function multi_index (some simple subset of it) variant and any (and their differences) ref (with a couple of examples where it is useful) type_traits (just so to show that something like this exists)

possibly a little bit of regex possibly a little of threads

Really nice list, thank you. About boost::ref, I'm struggling to find an example that isn't related to boost::bind. Any suggestion? Thanks. -- José Tomás Tocino García

Really nice list, thank you. About boost::ref, I'm struggling to find an example that isn't related to boost::bind. Any suggestion?

That's one of those things in the back of the toolbox that you're glad you have when you need it. Don't waste a huge amount of time trying to explain what it might do, as it will be "the answer" once they come across the need for it on their own. Just say that several such "good to have" tools are available. --John TradeStation Group, Inc. is a publicly-traded holding company (NASDAQ GS: TRAD) of three operating subsidiaries, TradeStation Securities, Inc. (Member NYSE, FINRA, SIPC and NFA), TradeStation Technologies, Inc., a trading software and subscription company, and TradeStation Europe Limited, a United Kingdom, FSA-authorized introducing brokerage firm. None of these companies provides trading or investment advice, recommendations or endorsements of any kind. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

Robert Jones wrote:

The new Range library might also be worth some attention, as much as anything for its ability to leverage a higher level of abstraction of ranges.

Excellent suggestion! I should have mentioned Range myself. I consider that abstraction far more intuitive and facile than the loose pairs of iterators favored by classic STL. While we're at it, Boost.Assign eliminates yet another small but common "you can't do that in C++" irritation.