Dan Day wrote:
I still think the semantics of `lexical_cast("127")` should allow for the conversion to happen -- either convert to a 'short int' then assign to a char, if that makes any sense.
There is no way to distinguish int8_t and char. They are both aliases to the same type. Welcome to the wonderful world of typedefs.
Maybe I'm just short-sighted, but it seems to me this really isn't a problem. A lexical_cast conversion from char * -> char doesn't make much practical sense in my mind except for grabbing the first character in the string, which can be done numerous other ways. AFAICS, lexical_cast could be specialized for char * -> char for such conversions as the OP desires. To me, that would be far more useful than the current behavior.
FWIW, I completely agree. I consider lexical_cast<char>("123") to be silly, and I don't quite care what the semantics of it are. It might as well not compile at all. lexical_cast<[u]int8_t>("123") is very useful, and should provide numeric conversion. The fact the the standard I/O streams behave differently is, well, unfortunate, but doesn't mean we have to continue punishing ourselves in lexical_cast also (or in to_string/string_to which I hope will replace lexical_cast, but that's completely OT).