"Robert Ramey" <ramey@rrsd.com> writes:
Jeremy Siek wrote:
[suggestions] 1. Named parameters in the interface
One tiny observaton. The suggestion of named parameters for the interface could well be applied to many if not most if not all libraries.
I doubt the suggestion can be made as convincingly in most cases. It makes sense where you have many functions with either: a. many parameters with the "same" type (e.g. all integral), so you really want to distinguish them by name because the typechecker won't prevent you from getting the order wrong b. many parameters with useful defaults and no linear ordering dependency among them. In other cases, it provides less benefit.
Could this not be considered as a separate orthogonal layer to the current interface? This would
a) make the named parameter interface available where convenient
OK, good idea.
b) make it optional rather than obligatory
I don't understand; It's already optional.
c) set the precedent for other libraries which might benefit from a named parameter interface - without the need to re-do any of the library itself.
You don't need to "re-do the library." It's a trivial transformation to add a named parameter interface to an existing function. Just rename it slightly or put it in a detail namespace and dispatch to it from the named-parameter-enabled function that uses the implementation function's original name. To clients of the original function, there's practically no detectable difference.
Perhaps there could even be a convention such as
boost/named_parameters/date_time.hpp ...
or perhaps
boost/date_time/named_parameters.hpp
I understand why we want to do that for, e.g., Python bindings. Having Python installed and linking with it is a responsibility nobody wants to accept unless they need Python. Using Boost.Parameter is not the same sort of thing; it comes with Boost and is transparent to build/configuration issues. I'm not saying what you're suggesting is a bad idea; I just don't see what great advantage it offers. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com