From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-17 12:35:02
At 01:12 PM 9/17/2002, Gennaro Prota wrote:
> How can something that nobody has used yet
>be existing practice?
Welcome to the real world of standards work. It isn't always a straight
path.
Let me give you an example. When LWG first started to look at
boost::regex, an LWG member commented that some aspects of the interface
were "push" rather than the "pull" (iterator-based) interfaces common in
the standard.
So there are two existing practices, and they conflict somewhat.
To be responsive, John Maddock's formal proposal for adding regex to the
Standard Library TR proposes an interface that uses iterators more in
keeping with the standard than the current Boost version. (John, appologies
if I haven't got this quite right).
Now someone might say that such a modified interface proposal is no longer
existing practice. But the LWG takes a wider view, and expects some changes
as an interface is readied for final submission to them.
--Beman