Alexander Nasonov wrote:
Stefan Slapeta wrote:
I'm very in favor of this. It has been proposed multiple times and Kevlin once told me he is going to extend any_cast this way, but it seems he is too busy.
Reviewing a small patch usually takes less time then writing it. Has anybody with a patch contacted him? If not, I can do this. Here's the patch: http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg76565.php
Given that overall reaction is positive, I'll make the change, starting with the 'cast to reference' logic I wanted in the first place. The only difference between my version and the one you mention above is this snippet in 'any_cast': #ifdef BOOST_NO_TEMPLATE_PARTIAL_SPECIALIZATION // Please use BOOST_BROKEN_COMPILER_TYPE_TRAITS_SPECIALIZATION macro // to generate specialization of remove_reference for your class // See type traits library documentation for details BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(!::boost::is_reference<nonref>::value); #endif It looks to me that this assert will always be triggered when your pass reference type and BOOST_NO_TEMPLATE_PARTIAL_SPECIALIZATION is defined, right? The assert will fire even if used has specialized remove_reference, no? If that's true, the comment is not correct and casting to reference is just not supported for broken compilers. I see that your patch also: 1. Strips cv-qualification in constructor (which is reasonable). 2. Strips cv-qualification when casting to pointer. Why the second aspect is needed? - Volodya