Thread: Do you use Boost?

  1. #1
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    Do you use Boost?

    Yes, I've been coding for almost 3 years now in school and I didn't use Boost on all of my projects.

    Now, I'm building a 3D game engine and I want to know what's the benefits of using boost. I heard many good thing about this set of libraries.

    Most of the time I hear about those smart and shared pointers which I really don't know how to use. I saw on their feature list that they also support threads which I think is great.

    Can anyone here tell me how Boost help your projects? What's so great about it?

    Thank you
    Sarah

  2. #2
    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sarah22
    Do you use Boost?
    Yes.

    Quote Originally Posted by sarah22
    Can anyone here tell me how Boost help your projects? What's so great about it?
    I have used dynamic_bitset when I needed one. Stuff like pointer containers, lexical_cast and Boost.Format come in handy from time to time. Other than that, it is mostly just a way for me to use certain TR1 facilities now when they might not be available, including std::tr1::shared_ptr.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
    I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.
    Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

  3. #3
    C++まいる!Cをこわせ!
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    Absolutely. I continue to try to find new ways of utilizing boost. It has so much stuff it's difficult to know when to use it.
    Before C++0x, boost::bind was one of my favorites. I also like Boost.Format.
    Smart pointers are a must. I made my own, but otherwise I'd use std::shared_ptr (C++0x), or alternatively, std::tr1::shared_ptr or boost::shared_ptr.
    lexical_cast is still heavily used everywhere I need to convert integers -> strings or vice versa.
    Boost also helps out on adding some operators to your classes and much more.
    When dealing with filesystems, I want to use Boost.Filesystem.
    Ah, and don't forget boost::array (now std::array or std::tr1::array).

    Probably more. And definetely more in the future.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

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    What I've used -- filesystem, regex, datetime and program options -- are all pretty cool. I especially like the recursive directory iterator.

  5. #5
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    I've personally never used it. I'm not quite sure why; I have some phobia for third party code, as I have too much experience with extremely lousy coding. I know boost is of extremely good quality, but... the urge to use it has never been greater than my opposing to it.
    And about all those useful things listed before, I've written such classes myself at least once before...

    I suggest you use it unless you have the same phobia I have.

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