Re: Serialization

From:

Andrea Crotti <andrea.crotti.0@gmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:49:03 +0100

Message-ID:

<m1eib0je28.fsf@ip1-201.halifax.rwth-aachen.de>

Brian Wood <woodbrian77@gmail.com> writes:

What is gained by the Serializable base class?
I'd write it like this:

class PadNodeID
{
protected:
  void SendMemberData(SendCompressedBuffer* buf) const;

public:
  template <typename R>
  explicit PadNodeID(ReceiveCompressedBuffer<R>* buf);

  void CalculateMarshallingSize(Counter& cntr) const;

  void
  Send(SendCompressedBuffer* buf, bool = false) const
  {
    SendMemberData(buf);
  }
};

Nothing in practice, but it's an interface that when implemented would
force the programmer to avoid implementing some needed functions.

Of course I can also just implement those functions and that's it.
But I like this

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
template <typename R>
explicit PadNodeID(ReceiveCompressedBuffer<R>* buf);
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Why do you use a pointer here instead of a reference?
And I finally only read now about the explicit, which if I understand
force you to not write something like

PadNodeID p = buffer;

with automatic conversion, but is that really useful or just something
nice to have in these situations?