Yakov Galka wrote :
Excuse my ignorance, but can someone explain to me why people are so keen on immutable strings? Aren't they basically the same as 'shared_ptr<const std::string>'?
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create a class called boost::string that will have all the properties that a string handling class in 2011+ A.D. should have, basically what std::string should have been.
? What are those properties? Isn't std::string *is* what it should have been? Do you mean that you want to put there in any possible algorithm you can imagine?
Do you really consider a structure allowing anybody to change any byte in its internal representation, eventually breaking its validity, as a suitable candidate for a publicly used, standard, encoded string? If the message is "Don't mess with my bytes, use my vendor high level API to access me", we should not exspect C++ developpers to get it by providing an hazardous backward compatible API. I see the immutable string proposal as a way to express the definitely needed breaking change in our string handling habits. A kind of shortcut way, though, but quite a good one. Regards, Ivan.