On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Stewart, Robert <Robert.Stewart@sig.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, February 18, 2009 1:15 PM Steven Watanabe wrote:
On Wednesday, February 18, 2009 12:46 PM Emil Dotchevski wrote:
Many times I've needed to_string without needing from_string. In my book, this is a strong indication that they shouldn't be coupled.
Your argument isn't compelling. Consider an arbitrary
Stewart, Robert wrote: precision integer type. If many times one need only add such values, without also needing subtraction, should those operations be separated one from the other?
It isn't necessary to separate them, but it is not unreasonable to do so either.
I won't argue that point, but it only applies if there are two such sets of functions. If there isn't "from_string" and "to_string," but only, for example, "convert," then there's no point in separate headers. It's a question of whether "string" should be at the center of the conversions as it is with "from_string" and "to_string."
"If you have two separate classes A and B, if instead you cram them both into a single class C, then there's no point in separating them." You're presuming that it makes sense to put converting to- and from- string into a single interface. For what it's worth, consider that sprintf/sscanf are separate interfaces too, despite the many similarities and analogies between them. Unlike addition and subtraction which are symmetrical, converting to- and from- string isn't. For example I searched our source code for to_string and from_string. We have 314 occurrences of to_string (in 112 source files), and only 33 calls to from_string (in 11 source files.) Only 2 files use both to_string and from_string. Emil Dotchevski Reverge Studios, Inc. http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode