On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:52:45 +0100, JOAQUIN LOPEZ MU?Z <joaquin@tid.es> wrote:

----- Mensaje original ----- De: Bruno Martínez Aguerre <br1@internet.com.uy> Fecha: Jueves, Diciembre 16, 2004 9:50 pm Asunto: [boost] Re: [multi_index] announce: added serialization support

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Can serialization for iterator types be added?

Ummm... yes, this can be done. It'd be trivial except that it interacts badly with Boost.MultiIndex safe mode. Let me think it over, I guess I can have something done after Xmas.

Do you have the actual need to serialize iterators or is this more of an academic request? Have you tried the serialization capabilities in some compiler? Did you find any problem?

I haven't tried using multi_index nor it's serialization capabilities yet. However, I do think there are practical uses of iterator serialization. For one, recently there was a conversation between you and Robert Ramey about serialization of something like this: container<SomeClass> v; SomeClass* p; //point to an element of v IIRC, this wasn't currently supported by the serialization library. An iterator there instead of a pointer would be a workaround for this situation. Second, I believe it would be useful for freezing a computation. Say I'm iterating over a multi_index, and I wan't to stop and remember where I was. If I can serialize the iterator of the current position along with the multi_index container, this can easily be achieved. What do you think? Bruno