Hello again. I previously presented an argument of why our best option for container streaming is to extend namespace std. I was surprised by the dearth of responses, but I understand that we're all busy and I admit was a bit wordy. Here is my argument again with, heavily snipped. I think this is the most important issue in making this a boost library. Thanks for reading. Jeffrey Faust wrote:
In my opinion the ideal interface is the most natural, simplest, and the most familiar to C++ developers: 'cout << c;' where c is a container of type C.
The only way I know how to make 'cout << c;' work for all cases is to put operator<<(C) in the same namespace as C. For example, variant<C, ...> will not stream if C is in std and operator<<(C) is not.
In regards to extending namespace std, I understand what the standard says and I think I understand the reasons behind it. One could add something to namespace std that conflicts with an existing item, changing the behavior. This is undefined behavior, and the standard is right in restricting it. I don't believe this problem exists for this library in how we plan to extend std.
If we know that on all supported compilers that extending namespace std in this way behaves correctly, what is the concrete problem of doing so?
-- Jeff Faust