From: "Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net> Rob Stewart wrote:
From: "Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net>
I don't view overloading for overloading's sake as improvement; there's nothing wrong with giving different names to different behaviors.
These functions do very nearly the same thing. That seems an ideal case for overloading.
This particular case is on the fence. One could think of the overloaded interface as a typesafe approximation of
status_return_flags status( path const & p, status_option_flags flags = status_option_default );
with follow_symlink being the only option flag at the moment.
OK. I'm missing your point, though.
In general, though, excessive overloading should be avoided. My usual litmus
I agree wholeheartedly that "excessive overloading should be avoided." I don't see this as excessive overloading.
test for appropriate overloading is: can you tell what this does:
f( x, y );
without looking up the exact types of x and y.
You can never tell in C++. Is "f" a macro? What is the scope of the call? "f" is hardly a telling name, so how can one determine what f(x,y) does for any pair of arguments? All of those questions aside, how does this apply to the case before us? -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;