Joel de Guzman
Mon, 01 Sep 2003 01:22:57 +0000
Brian McNamara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I should mention in passing that, while in general I think "implicit > conversions" are bad news and should be avoided whenever reasonable, I > do think the "conversion to bool" is an exceptional case, simply because > it is already so deeply ingrained in C++ (and C) language/culture. > > (Fortunately bool has a very narrow interface, so it doesn't get us into > too much trouble. Implicit conversions to user-defined types may create > arbitrary interface conflicts/conceptual ambiguities, and this is where > the real trouble begins.) Perhaps, but we were also taught that operator overloading may create arbitrary interface conflicts/conceptual ambiguities, and this is where the real trouble begins ;-) That may be true in some (many?) contexts, but it is not definitely universally true. As I mentioned in another post, I never had, nor seen, any complaints about reference_wrapper<T>, which incidentally, has an implicit conversion to T. ref(var) has been in extensive use by a lot of libraries for many years now. -- Joel de Guzman http://www.boost-consulting.com http://spirit.sf.net _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost