AMDG Emil Dotchevski wrote:
The issue is not just naming and syntax.
The two approaches are:
1) Define a "to_string" interface and a separate, independent "from_string" interface
2) Define a single interface that can go to and from string
The second approach introduces coupling between to_string and from_string. This coupling must be justified, you need to get something in return. The only "something" I see here is that it lets you write code which doesn't "know" if it's going "to" or "from" string.
The only other benefit, is possible syntactic nicity. Note that this function can be in a very light weight header that forwards to the correct implementation, so the coupling would be minimal.
My problem is that I can't think of a case when I would be writing code that doesn't "know" if it is going "to" or "from" string. Can you?
IMO, a use case where exactly one of the arguments is known to be a string, but it is unknown which one, is unlikely. In Christ, Steven Watanabe