Joel <joel@boost-consulting.com> wrote: Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote: "Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email)" <SeeWebsiteForEmail@moderncppdesign.com> wrote
... So I think it's entirely reasonable that building boost might generate C++ using *other* tools. I bet such an approach would lead to more maintainable and easy-to-understand code (only requiring knowledge of general tools that should be in a boost developer's toolchest anyway) instead of using the PP programming paradigm, of which learning I believe is less rewarding.
Interesting... Can you provide an example of how would such a tool generate C++ based on the library user input... Lets just start with the simplest one: the user wants to set maximum size of the mpl::vector<> to 50... Can you explain how that would be achieved with an external tool?
For example, we can have a python script that will generate header files for vector0 .. vector50 given some user supplied configs (with defaults). I remember some people doing that before boost PP became the norm (e.g. boost.python).
However... see my other post.
I have a simple problem and will write a trivial cpp program to do it, but perhaps someone has an idea of a better way to do it. The wish is to have a compile time string that is an MPL vector of char so that I can write a compile time parser with certain features. A bit like the xpressive static mode with a bit of spirit thrown in... I can't see a way of doing it nicely with the PP. This strikes me as an example of something that makes you reach for something outside the PP. In this case it is just a simple substitution. Source __cts"a string" Result typedef mpl::vector<char, 'a',' ','s','t','r','i','n','g'> cts_a_string Or some such... Any thoughts? Matt. matthurd@acm.org