"Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net> writes:
David Abrahams wrote:
"Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net> writes:
("Archive" implies persistency, and relying on a specific memory layout is not a way to achieve it.)
I think Robert's statement
"Here, we use the term "serialization" to mean the reversible deconstruction of an arbitrary set of C++ data structures to a sequence of bytes. [...]
Robert's statement is not at odds with what I wrote above.
What you wrote above implies additional constraints not present in Robert's statement. He doesn't say anything about persistency. I can think of many useful Archives that don't "persist" in any meaningful way. Whether those correspond to your notion of the word "archive" is another matter.
If you have such an archive, you can add an overload SFINAE'd on is_bitwise_serializable
Robert wants portability to vc6, which doesn't support SFINAE. I doubt he'd want to accept a change that, to be practically taken advantage of, would require users to apply SFINAE.
On VC6 you can use separate overloads.
I have the feeling I must be missing something fundamental. :-)
Me too. It certainly seems as though you -- most uncharacteristically I might add -- jumped into this conversation and made many statements without due consideration.
What do you perceive as the important difference between providing an optimize_array overload that returns mpl::true_ and providing a save_sequence overload that calls .save_array? (Except that the latter is obviously more flexible.)
It's not a major difference; I have merely been giving rationale for our choices and preferences. In short: a. Less code to write and fewer opportunities to make mistakes. Not a big difference, but a difference nonetheless. b. The ability to use a base class to implement common functionality. That's useful when accomodating Robert's desire not to modify his existing library code in any way, if you want to avoid duplicating support for std::vector and builtin arrays. In short, your simple proposal would, I think, be a major improvement. However, it is incomplete, it doesn't address Robert's constraints, and it imposes a bit more work than necessary on archive authors. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com