April 2007 ISO C++ Standards Meeting

I didn't put much attention on C++ for a while, (for monthes)
and here's a brief summary of the last meeting
(April 15-20, 2007 in Oxford, UK.) written by Herb Sutter.
(the author of Exceptional series)

> 1. Template aliases (aka typedef templates, generalized typedefs) [N2258]

Improve the use of "using" to do better alias.
It would help much when you do template programming,
and you could achieve much that's not possible in C++03.

> 2. Variadic templates (aka "type varargs" for templates)
> [N2242; see N2087 for a more readable description and rationale]

The best example of using this feature is tuple,
and it helps much when you have to manipulate many types.

> 3. Unicode characters and strings [N2249]

No comment.
It's important, and just complete it for simple usage.

> 4. New Library Features Voted Into (Draft) C++09

Rvalue references is so important.
See "The Forwarding Problem" for more details.
And the first thing would be deprecated is "auto_ptr",
replaced with "unique_ptr". I have to admit that
I am a little disappointed about this, because
they are different in places, though auto_ptr is
certainly dangerous.


It seems not all of the C++0x features are discussed
in the meeting. Let's wait and see what would happend
when C++0x finally becomes C++09 and in production mode.
I have a great prospect about this, hoping C++ would
be more and more useful and powerful.

See "JTC1/SC22/WG21 - Papers 2007" for papers in 2007.
(Wish I have times to read them.)

p.s. google have been my best dictionary because it helps
me correct my spelling. (not from casting a spell though)