David Abrahams wrote:
Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
Okay, if there are no objections, this is what I'll do.
This didn't come out quite right -- I know that Daryle has objected.
I guess I mean: given the fact that the namespace-directory convention has already been widely violated, if there are no further objections I'll keep the library in the iostreams directory but use the io namespace.
I didn't see the whole thread, but we ought to try to avoid violating the convention any more than it has been. As Boost grows, this becomes more important. What's wrong with a namespace boost::iostreams? You can always introduce an alias for backward compatibility.
I would greatly prefer to use the namespace "boost::io" because:
(i) it is much shorter than "boost::iostreams"; while it is possible to use an alias to shorten it, I'd hate to make users do this when there is a
Since you didn't see the whole thread, let me quote myself: Jonathan Turkanis wrote: perfectly
suitable short name available. (ii) there currently are not many declarations in the namespace "boost::io", so there is not much chance of collisions (iii) it is a more accurate discription of the library, since the core infrastructure is independent of the standard iostreams library and might be used without streams, e.g., for async i/o.
(i) is particularly important, since the documentation will contain a lot of tutorial material in which the namespace qualification can't be omitted, e.g., template<typename Sink> void put(Sink& dest, int c) { if (c == '\n') col_no_ = 0; else { if (col_no_ >= line_length_) this->put(dest, '\n'); ++col_no_; } boost::io::put(dest, c); } The occurence of boost::io::put in the above example has to be qualified, since otherwise it will refer to the member function being defined. I worry that having to use a long namespace name or to introduce a namespace alias in a high percentage of the examples will make the documentation harder to follow, and the library harder to learn. If I have to choose, then, I would much rather use the namespace io and move the library back to boost/io than use the namespace iostreams. Jonathan