Re: overload operator<<

Hi Jon,

Your reaction about confusing symbols is understandable I think, what
I dont understand is the hidden agressive part. In my experience with
c++ I have had never any problem with the overloaded meaning of
operator << and >>.
Like most truths in a human world its overloaded with respect to some
context. I dont understand why your c# spec is the wholy grail when
compaired to a completely vendor independent c++ language spec and
comite.

Rick

On Sat, 7 May 2005 18:52:46 +0100, Jon Skeet [C# MVP]
<skeet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Steve Richter <StephenRichter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Just because an operator has been abused in one language doesn't mean
>>
>> > it should be abused in others too. You can get used to any number of
>> > things, but bad habits should be broken. << and >> are not "suck" or
>> > "blow" operators - they're bitshifting operators. Their purpose is in
>>
>> > the specification. That's what they should be used for, and all they
>> > should be used for.
>>
>> placing the emphasis on names to indicate what a statement does has two
>> problems. There is the obvious that if you dont know english the
>> meaning will not be apparent. ( yeah, yeah - keep the name simple and
>> consistent ). Another major problem is the designers of the .net
>> framework might make confusing choices.
>
>I think there are few choices as confusing as making a bitshifting
>operator effectively stream data, personally. That was a bad choice on
>the part of C++ library designers.
>
>> on friday I had to deal with converting strings to and from ebcdic
>> bytes. I am still new to .net and had not yet worked with the Encoding
>> and Decoding classes. ( still dont know the difference between an
>> Encoder and Encoding ).
>
>The difference is basically that an Encoding is stateless, and an
>Encoder/Decoder has state. For instance, if you are trying to read
>characters from a stream, you might only get part of a character, if
>you're reading a multi-byte character and only get the start of it. A
>Decoder remembers the bytes which have been read but haven't formed a
>full character yet, so that when the rest of the bytes turn up, the
>whole character can be returned.
>
>> I gave the MSDN documention 15 minutes and
>> none of the method names made sense to me. Without the examples I
>> found in google groups ( I think it was a post of Jon Skeets that was
>> the best example I found ), I would still be at it.
>>
>> Here is the code that translate a string to ebcdic bytes:
>> System.Text.Encoding encoding =
>> System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding( 37 ) ;
>> byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes( InString ) ;
>>
>> "GetBytes" makes little sense to me. "TranslateTo" is more intuitive.
>> But why rely on either. In my c++ class framework masterpiece the code
>> reads:
>>
>> EbcdicBytes bytes( 37 ) ; // code page 37
>> std::string InString ;
>> bytes = InString ; // replace the contents of bytes with InString
>> bytes << InString ; // add InString to the contents of bytes
>>
>> I think this second example is much more readable. That is just my
>> opinion. What I dont agree with is the C# designers not allowing the
>> choice between the two styles. I prefer symbols over words.
>
>You find the above more readable, but I suggest that if you could write
>the above in C#, pretty much *anyone* who hadn't used C++ but had read
>the C# language specification would disagree - they'd wonder how on
>earth you were expecting to shift something by a string.
>
>The << and >> operators have a well-specified meaning, which has
>nothing to do with streaming data. Language allows one to be much more
>descriptive than symbols - symbols are just a shorter way of expressing
>things *when everyone knows what the symbols mean*. As soon as you
>start changing what the symbols mean, confusion enters.
>

>I'm very glad that I'll never have to read code like the above in C#.

.

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