From: Pavol Droba (droba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-05-23 01:29:05
Hi
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:15:58AM +0400, Vladimir Prus wrote:
[snip]
> I'll keep this in mind. In fact, I plan to convert all the documentation
> into BoostBook is the library is accepted. The Doxygen is very nice --- in
> fact, it helps very much to keep everything documented. But I found it
> rather limiting for writing various "overview" pages. Hope new
> documentation will be better.
Great.
> > * Validation
> >
> > Library allows to supports validation and parsing of option parameters,
> > but I thinks it is rather limited. It is possible to define
> > user-specific behaviour, but it would be helpful, if some common
> > formats would be suported.
> >
> > For instance:
> > * Various integer types ( not just int ) with boundary checking.
> > Something like
> > paramter<int>( "count", 1, 4, &count ) // 1-Min and 4-Max
> > value
>
> It's funny that the very first prototype version had this facility. In
> surely can be added to the current version if there's such need.
>
>
I like the idea proposed by Tanton. po::parameter should have a validation
predicate as an argument.
A reasonable set of arguments can be provided by library, and the user can always
provide a specific ones.
> > * Format specification and checking for string. Regex specification
> > of something like scanf would be nice.
> > This can be useful for example to check if the parameter is a
> > filename.
>
> Could you clarify a bit how scanf-like specification can work? You mean it
> can be used to specify syntax?
>
I mean something like "%02.4f" or something like that... it is just an idea. If there
would be a validation predicate as an argument, regex library can be used to define
regex predicate which would cover most of the cases.
> > * Environment & Others
> >
> > The library tries to unify the access to program options from command
> > line and from ini files. This is very nice feature because it is
> > removing the need for doing generaly the same thing twice. It would be
> > nice if some other sources of paramers could be incorporated as well.
> > Particulary the enviromnmet is often used to exchange arguments. Given
> > the fact that it consist of a set of pairs "variable=value" it is very
> > similar to the ini file and so it souldn't be hard to implement.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion! It's quite right.
>
> > For windows platform the registry comes to play as another source of
> > options.
>
> Yep, that source was considered as alternative from the very start. I've
> seen some project start with a command line, then add config files and then
> need registry on Windows. Registry is not yet supported because I wanted to
> find out if there's support to the idea of uniform access to all
> configuration means.
I definitely like the idea of the uniform access. It would be only welcome if the library
can cover more sources of options.
Pavol