Re: ambiguous types: want automatic conversion

From:
 Old Wolf <oldwolf@inspire.net.nz>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:27:42 -0700
Message-ID:
<1190330862.860169.178320@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 21, 10:26 am, Markus Dehmann <markus.dehm...@gmail.com> wrote:

std::cout << i; // works
std::cout << s; // doesn't work: "Not an int" exception thrown

  class Value {
    std::string stringValue;
    int intValue;
    bool isString;
    bool isInt;
  public:
    Value(std::string s) : isString(true), isInt(false),
stringValue(s) {}
    Value(int i) : isString(false), isInt(true), intValue(i) {}
    operator std::string (){
      if(!isString){throw std::runtime_error("Not a string");}
      return stringValue;
    }
    operator int (){
      if(!isInt){throw std::runtime_error("Not an int");}
      return intValue;
    }
  };


Well, this code will work. However it is quite obfuscated.

operator<< for std::ostream accepts both int and std::string.
However, int is selected because it is a builtin type. If
you had another conversion , e.g. operator double(), defined
you would get an ambiguous error.

It would be better to make the logic more explicit, i.e.
define operator<<(std::ostream &, Value) .

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