On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:35:12 +0400, Vladimir Prus <ghost@cs.msu.su> wrote:
Hello! While it's generally considered a bad practice to provide implicit conversions, I think it would be good to provide such a conversion for the boost::format class. Currently, I can't write:
string s; s = format("%1%") % 10;
and need to write
s = (format("%1%") % 10).str();
Maybe it's specifics of my code, but I can count 10 such conversions in a single source file. I think that:
1. Calling .str() is rather inconvenient. 2. The 'format' class most often used inside expressions. It's not likely to be passed around to functions and so the dangers of implicit conversions are not critical.
Thoughts?
As a shortcut you can overload any available operator you like. Binary one for string and format or unary for format. The latter requires additional coding or additional parenthesis but has an advantage of being able to be used as an initializer. Something like that: // binary operator string s; s << format("%1%") % 10; // unary operator string s(~(format("%1%") % 10)); -- Maxim Yegorushkin