std.boxer vs Any

[Bill Baxter]

Marcin Kuszczak wrote:

> import doost.util.config.ProgramOptions;
> import doost.util.config.CommandLineStorage;
> 
> void main(char[][] args) {
>   //Definition of simplest options stack
>   auto po = (new ProgramOptions)
>                 .next(
>             (new CommandLineStorage(args))
>                 .caption("Command line options")
>                 .options()
>                   ("help,h", "produce help message")
>                   ("compression", define!(int), "set compression level")
>                   ("sync", "stores cmdline options in persistent backend")
>                   ()
>             );
> 
>   //Conecting to storages
>   po.connect();
> 
>   //Reading options
>   if ("help" in po) writefln(po);
>   if ("compression" in po)      
>         writefln("Compresson level set to: ", po["compression"].as!(uint));
> 
>   //Disconnecting storages
>   po.disconnect;
> }
>  
> ---------->8----------

What's the difference between std.boxer and doost.core.Any?

Seems like they do basically the same thing.  Only big difference seems 
to be that boxer is a struct, while Any is a class.

Boxer looks to be smarter about conversions (unbox!(uint) in the above 
example looks like it would probably work.)

But boxer uses void[] storage, meaning it's not a good idea to use boxer 
for floating point values or random hash-like integer values (will lead 
to gc leaks).

Anyway, I suppose you had your reasons for writing Any rather than just 
going with what's in the library... what were they?


And part B) of my question is -- maybe you could borrow some of the 
unboxing logic from boxer to make Any.as!(type) more flexible.  To me, 
'as' sounds like it's going to be a flexible conversion.  Maybe the 
current behavior could be renamed to Any.get!(type) or Any.value!(type).

--bb