16.11.12, 10:30, "Antony Polukhin":
Better then other names, but at first glance it is not clear, that char_range can be used as string.
Depends on what you understand by string. It can't grow, for example. No name can embrace all features.
3. It's worth having a static constructor 'literal' (templated with size) to construct char_ranges from literals - as the compiler knows their size in compile time (minus zero terminator). It can be a constexpr too. Same manner - static function 'from_array', embrasing an array of chars in whole, assuming there is no zero terminator - useful for working with structures representing messages in char-based protocols with fixed-width fields.
Instead of 'literal' I'd propose a following constructor:
template <size_type N> explicit string_ref(const Char (&str)[N]);
See the difference: char s[20]="ab\0c"; char_range(s); // size 2 because of strlen inside, runtime char_range::literal( "ab\0c" ); // size 4, compile time char_range::from_array(s); // size 20, compile time char_range::from_array( "ab\0c" ); // size 5, compile time
As I know, lots of people are unhappy with current design of std::basic_string. They think that it has too many member functions in it. If those functions were also implemented as free, more containers would be able to reuse them (they can be reused by basic_string implementation in Boost.Containers, by string_ref implementation). May be authors of Boost.StringAlgo, Boost.Container, Boost.StringRef cooperate for better code reuse?
I believe Boost.StringAlgo already does the job. Thanks, Maxim