On 23 June 2010 16:01, Eric Niebler <eric@boostpro.com> wrote:
On 6/23/2010 6:12 AM, Daniel James wrote:
You should inherit from std::runtime_error, since that would be usually caused by bad input rather than programmer error.
Bad input can be a programmer error too.
I meant input from an external source. Which would almost always be the case for this function. Any such function must be able to cope with any possible string.
To be honest, I don't see the value of this. As this is the kind of thing which is handled well in other ways (e.g. using a parser or lexer generator, or a standard data format such as XML, JSON etc.). There tends to be odd differences in quoting, encoding and escaping styles making a generic function awkward. It's not as specific as a filename extractor and not as generic as a parser and it's not clear why there's a need for something in between.
Parser and lexer generators are complicated beasts, and I wouldn't send a novice programmer in that direction if it could be helped.
"...or a standard data format such as XML, JSON etc."
Most quoting/unquoting is very straightforward. There's a quote character and an escape character. For anything more complicated, yes, build your own.
I don't think it's ever been that simple in my experience. Daniel