add c++20/23 constructors to basic_string_view
sehe opened this issue · 3 comments
The following constructors were added:
template <class It, class End> constexpr basic_string_view(It first, End last);
template <class R> constexpr basic_string_view(R&& r);
constexpr basic_string_view(std::nullptr_t) = delete;
(where It
/End
and R
are subject to the usual restrictions)
People might expect these to be present on the Boost implementation.
Given the feedback in boostorg/core#113, I kind of agree that the second constructor is probably a bad idea. The first one requires a modern standard library as it must only compile for contiguous iterators, which is C++20 I think. We currently don't have the infrastructure for this. I don't find the third one very useful, but fine, I guess.
I agree on the third one.
Let's accept this as not desirable for now. In reality, the purpose of string_view alternatives outside the standard library are either supporting older compilers (so the missing c++20+ constructors are moot) or adding interoperability benefits (e.g. core::string_view
).
What about adding a more restricted version of the first constructor?
explicit constexpr basic_string_view(const_iterator first, const_iterator last);
This would at least provide compatibility with iterator_range
's copy_range
and as a result make string_view
usable with string algorithms without needing to do a follow up conversion. Take for example this reduced example taken from code we're actually using (where we're forced to have an intermediate std::vector<boost::iterator_range<const char*>>
to convert from):
auto do_split(boost::string_view str) {
std::vector<boost::string_view> tokens;
boost::split(tokens, str, [](const char c) { return c == ','; });
return tokens;
}
This would seemingly provide partial forward compatibility with C++20's constructor without creating backwards compatibility problems in the future (that I can see).
Edit: I added this as a comment on boostorg/core#113 (comment). But I was unaware that's a different string_view
than this one.