I believe I've seen traffic earlier about some kind of upcoming deadline for proposals for becoming part of the C++ standard.
I'm thinking that it would be nice to be able to us define distinct types based on strings (the fundamental type const char * and not std::string). The intended use is in templates. Here's one motivating example: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boost/files/associative_list/ by Emily Winch Inside there is a line: struct a{}; struct b{}; struct c{}; struct d{}; Which is then followed up by calls such as get<a>(...) get<b>(...) ... a,b,c,d are all empty structures, with the only goal of getting distinct types (this easily could have human readable forms, like an address book example: struct FirstName{}; struct PhoneNumber{}; etc...) I guess what I want to know is: Does anyone know of other motivating examples, especially within other parts of boost? Any arguments as to why this is the worst idea ever? How about the best? ;) It seems like such functionality would be a convenience to the programmer. It would also make conversion of the type to a string format very easy ;) While that seems like a side topic, I'm sure that there are interesting ways to tie that in. For the moment, I'm just curious to see the reactions to the idea. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
