Re: We have a new standard!

On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 08:06:05 +0100
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> gabbled:

On 01/01/2025 17:33, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:

On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 18:25:27 +0200
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> gabbled:

Introduction of format() already showed that C++ committee is aware of
of the fact that "Stroustrup streams" are crap not only relatively to
format/printing facilities of more modern languages, but relatively
to what we have in C as well. std::print() proves that committee is not
only aware of the fact, but finally willing to consider fixes.

 Plus overloading << and >> was a cretinous decision. There was zero reason
he couldn't have created some new operators to avoid confusion, <<< and >>>
or <= , => for example where such combinations in C would never be legal
syntax anyway.
 

>
I don't actually agree - I think the choice of << and >> was not a bad one, though <= and => could have worked too.  Adding new operators just for the purpose of streams would have been overkill, IMHO.  The big

Now maybe, but when the language was new I don't see the problem in creating new
operators specifically for I/O. After all, he had to create new keywords so
why not operators? Even Bjarne must've thought at the time that something like:
cout << 0xFF << 2 << 1234;
would require brackets whereas
cout <= OxFF << 2 <= 1234;
is a lot clearer and doesn't.

alternative would have been to have a way to add new operators to the language.  That would have been a huge change to C++ - the language, the

Why would it?

IMHO the real mistake for iostreams for formatted output was making them modal - IO manipulators are a /terrible/ idea.  The type system and overloading should have been used instead, so that we would write :
>
cout << hex(x);
>
instead of
>
cout << hex << x << dec;

Agreed.

There are still plenty of other issues with the iostreams formatted output, but the choice of operator is the least of the problems.

Personally I think printf() should have been upgraded for C++ from the start
so you could use all the normal formatters but have new ones for object output with a slightly different format that would achieve similar. eg:
int i = 123;
const std::string s = "hello";
printf("%d: %$o\n",i,s);
In this case %$o would mean output yourself as a C char*.
Presumably this is what the new print() and println() functions will do except they seem to be using python style formatters for [reasons].