On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 13:22 +0100, vicente.botet wrote: [In reply to my comment of:]
I can't see how taking a std::string const& as an argument has any detrimental effect on conversions or code bloat. The std::string version of set_name would just remove the first line of the function (creating the temporary "name"), and use _name throughout the function body.
Description is even simpler: it just uses the const char* argument as a parameter to a std::string constructor. Accepting a std::string const& instead of a const char* will have minimal overheads (possibly one extra temporary string creation).
But maybe I'm missing something obvious? The fact that currently the implementation use a temporary string doesn't means that we can not change the implementation.
Indeed - and any change to using a const std::string& rather than const char* interface will also be backward compatible.
What about having both overloads? const char * is the best for literals, while string cont& is the best for strings variables.
My point was that there is no need for having both overloads: it doesn't (as far as I can see) provide any benefit having an "efficient" const char* call - there isn't any (obvious) extra conversions or code bloat by providing just the const std::string& interface because internally the const char* are immediately converted to std::string. But, as I said before, I might be missing something. Phil -- Phil Richards, <news@derived-software.ltd.uk>