I'm starting to fold in Boost.Filesystem support for the new C++0x character types. Support is emulated for compilers and standard libraries not currently supporting the 0x features. The emulation is working fine, with tests passing on Windows for GCC 4.5 and 4.6, and VC++ 8, 9, and 10. Haven't tested on non-Windows systems yet.
This is the same emulation approach Microsoft ships in VC++ 10.
It seems to me that all Boost libraries that want to emulate these 0X features should use the a unified approach. Otherwise we could get into a situation where libraries A and B worked fine in isolation, but had symbol or ODR clashes when used together.
The header I'm using is attached. I propose to place this in <boost/string_0x.hpp> rather than, say, <boost/filesystem/detail/string_0x.hpp>, and providing a simple doc page.
Does this make sense?
Yes but..... won't there be (possibly linker) errors from those std::string specializations? My gut feeling is that at the very least, some kind of basic_string concept check is required for those new string types. John.