Johnathan,
component_impl() returns a void*. What am I supposed to do, cast it? :-(
Of course ;-) What else can you do with a void*?
I must have missed that day in OOP design class. :-) And I don't see what that get's me even assuming that I cast it. The branch in the execution path that I want to intercept occurs in basic_streambuf<>::_Xsgetn_s() (Microsoft SL v8.0) or basic_streambuf<>::xgetn() (other SL). Even assuming that I cast your void pointer I won't get a chance to do so unless I replace _Xsgetn_s/xsgetn in the basic_streambuf<> vtable. The only (legitimate) way to do that is by derivation. Derivation is still a respectable means of specialization so far as I know.
Even better, if you can show that your implementation is superior to the current one, I can simply use yours instead. <
Well you could do that of course. But what happens in 6 months when I want to specialize something else? I don't see what advantage there is to making the typedefs private rather than protected. You could provide an accessor for pback_size_. I don't see why that shouldn't be provided in any case.
I'll have to review the old messages to remember what the sticking points were. I seem to remember there was a problem with STLPort requiring a larger putback buffer than other libraries.
After some subsequent testing I found that I didn't need to modify that part of the code. Regards, George.