"Eugene Lazutkin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Inline, > >"John Madsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> I have little experience with X-Windows, so I can't comment on that. >However, >> there is absolutely *nothing* in the smart_handle library that is platform >> specific. Just because one of the most obvious cases where it is useful >is a >> specific platform, does not make the library itself platform specific. I >find > >COM can be touted as platform independent standard but in 99.99% of case it >is used on Windows. Looks very windowsy to me. ;-) We can have any >proprietary stuff dressed as platform independent. In best case such >masquerade would fool us into thinking that it is more than it is. In worst >case it would be clumsy to use for proprietary stuff and unusable for >anything else. >
I fail to see how COM is a relevant analogy. The smart_handle classes I've proposed will work on all major platforms unlike COM. Several people have already suggested that it would be worthwhile for FILE*s and file descriptors. >> it hard to believe that there is no other C API which uses handles for >resource >> management that doesn't have a suitable C++ wrapper for every case other >than >> Windows. > >Usually solution and problem go in pair. And problem goes before solution. >In this case solution is our response to problem. Well, your comment tells >me that we have a solution in search of a problem. Not that there's anything >wrong with that. > See point above. >> that auto_ptr and the like provide those operators so that they can >actually >> act like pointers. If you want the pointer value itself from an auto_ptr, >you >> call get(). Note also that std::string has c_str() rather than operator >const >> char*(). > >Using operator->() and operator*() you use "pointer value itself". It is >pretty rare situation when you need it directly and not as part of >abc->def() or *abc constructs. Example of c_str() is irrelevant --- you can >do all string manipulations without c_str(). The former is needed to >interface legacy systems, which is not frequent case. > Automatic conversions are well known sources of hard to find bugs. Six characters hardly seems like a big deal. >Auto_ptr was modeled after regular pointer. That is why it is so simple to >use. It provides a) "invisible housekeeping" (see beginning of post) and b) >has pointer-like "API". In most cases it can be used as drop-in replacement >in existing code. > >I think smart handle should be done using exactly the same philosophy. >"Invisible housekeeping" clause stands. And handle-like "API" is ... >seamless conversion. What are real downsides of that? > >> I agree that in many cases scoped is more useful. However, it was fairly >> trivial to do shared and weak, so I figured why not? Also, shared_handles >will >> work in stl containers while scoped_handles will not. > >Isn't it an overkill to use reference counting to put handles in vector? Is >it the best solution for such problem? :-) > Not necessarily. Please suggest another. John _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
