Johnathan,
Now for some real fun. I am going to try and attach an overlapped filebuf to one of your
streams. :-)
Good luck!
That worked without a hitch. But that is only because my overlapped_filebuf uses blocking semantics. My original goal was to be able to transparently interchange regular files and sockets as "sinks" and this will allow me to do that. But the std stream and filebuf interfaces are really a straight-jacket when it comes to more advanced applications, such as truly asynchronous io; and the sooner we realize that the better. Imagine if, for example, instead of doing write(char_type*, size_t) you could do write(ref_string<char_type>&) or write(ref_string_plus_overlapped<char_type>&). An observer could transparently pass the buffer to the next layer without modification while an asynchronous sink could take ownership of buffer by calling a swap() member function and then pass the buffer to a waiting thread. The buffer could grow or shrink as it passes from one filter to another. The buffer could even pass in round robin fashion back to its origin if every observer or filter called swap() in turn. But that is just a dream. Regards, George.