Edward Diener wrote:
Robert Ramey wrote:
What is the point of having a library standard anyway?
I have always viewed the importance of a library standard as a means of specifying that an implementation which supports the language must provide the library also.
This automatically creates a common set of functionality for all implementations of the language. I view that as a good thing ...
no disagreement there. My question is how to guarentee this. There are at least two options: a) tweak the library to fit the compiler and meet the standard b) all of the following: i) requiring a language conforming implementation for the library ii) provide a reference implementation of the library. My view is that the current situation tolerates and perhaps encourages the a) while creating a huge amount of work in creating the standards. I believe that this work would better be invested elsewhere. Like actually bringing the compiler(s) to conformance.
but it certainly does not mean that the library standard must be the only library which works for nearly all implementations, as Boost has shown.
The library standard doesn't "work". It can't. It's not code. The standard doesn't include an implemenation. And once we have a reference implementation which can be compiled on a language conformant compiler, what is gained from the work required to add it to the standard? Robert Ramey