On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 00:50:04 +0200, Yuval Ronen wrote
Hi. I've used the date_time I/O using facets and found it too complicated. The thing that bothers me is that I need to use a facet to specify the format string (e.g "HH:MM:SS"). This is burdensome. IMO, using facets is fine for defining things which are really locale-related (and are mostly constant during the process lifetime) such as the month names in the local language.
Of course the order of dates *is* locale related. Even in the current standard library there is information in date facet about ordering.
The format is not such a property and can often change throughout the application, and as such is much better handled using an I/O manipulator:
cout << time_format("HH:MM:SS") << my_ptime << endl;
or if this is impossible, then
cout << time_io(my_ptime, "HH:MM:SS") << endl;
Shouldn't we stick to the current set of format strings which is consistent with the current standards? cout << time_format("%H:%M:%s") << my_ptime << endl;
which surely is possible.
I think of specifying the format string as similar to specifying the printing precision of a float, or specifying that an integer should be printed as hex. These are provided as manipulators without the complexity of facets (which most users, including me, know very little about).
BTW, this is not my original idea. I saw it in a post (don't remember by whom) in this mailing list a few months ago.
Sure this would be nice and it has been discussed before. The i/o code is implemented in a way that should allow for this. Patches certainly accepted. Jeff