Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Binary parsers

[Dean M. B. <mik...@gm...>]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:08 PM, Rodrigo Madera
<rod...@gm...> wrote:
>> Are you talking about Boost.Array? Because the last time I checked,
>> Boost.Array is statically-sized and is not as flexible as an
>> std::string. IMO, using something from the STL is "better" because you
>> don't need to rely on Boost being there to use the library. I won't
>> even be surprised if it was possible to package the header-only Boost
>> libs with cpp-netlib as a "standalone" download (with the help perhaps
>> of bcp). Of course if we're using Boost.Asio we rely on Boost.System
>> -- but other than that I'm confident there shouldn't be a lot of other
>> libraries cpp-netlib would rely on (of course aside from the STL).
>
> I'm curious, why std::string and not std::vector<char>?
>

Because std::string and std::vector<char> are effectively the same.
Aside from that std::string even has nice substring capabilities and
is just very easy to use. Imagine trying to optimize copying of
std::vector<char> around -- when std::string has the capability to do
copy-on-write.

In the next version of the standard though I think will invalidate
most of the implementations of std::string with concurrency
guarantees, but even then std::string and std::vector<char> will
essentially stay mostly equivalent (and std::string makes more
semantic sense if you're dealing with a string of characters).

-- 
Dean Michael C. Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.