Beman Dawes skrev:
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Thorsten Ottosen <thorsten.ottosen@dezide.com> wrote:
Dear all,
For a long time I have been missing this utility in my own work, and in boost related stuff too. I think there are a number of libraries in boost that can benefit from this utility. Libs like boost.format can be quite a bit more effective. So can logging libraries. etc.
...
Comments are most welcome.
I think auto_buffer would be a very useful addition to Boost.
A few quick comments:
* Move the comments about VLA's and differences from stlsoft::auto_buffer to a "Design History" (or similar) section of documentation. They just confuse readers who don't know anything about VLA's or have access to Matthew's book.
Good idea. I should have written some docs, but I just wanted to hear if there is interrest.
* Rename N to something more explicit. MaxStackElements perhaps?
Good idea.
* It looks like auto_buffer would often be preferable to boost::scoped_array. Or am I missing something?
No. There is one thing that could make boost::scoped_array<T> (and scoped_ptr<T> for that matter) occupy a slight niche. There is no general way to give up ownership of the buffer inside boost::auto_buffer<T> because it might be on the heap, or it might be on the stack. If boost::scoped_array<T> added a release() member function it would occupy that niche. release() is really useful to have when dealing with legacy code, so I have been unable to understand why it is not there in the first place (and yes, I understand the encapsulation concerns, but much prefer usability when we have to choose one of them). -Thorsten