(ARTICLE) C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup discusses the evolving C++0x standard.
In your paper, "TheDesign of C++0" published in the May 2005 issue of the C/C++ User'sJournal, you note that "C++'s emphasis on general features (notablyclasses) has been its main strength." In that paper you also mention the most change and new features will be in the Standard Library. A lot of people would like to see regular expressions, threads and the like, for example. Could you give us an idea of new classes or facilities that we can expect to see in C++0x's Standard Library?
The progress on standard libraries has not been what I hoped for. We will get regular expressions, hash tables, threads, many improvements to the existing containers and algorithms, and a few more minor facilities. We will not get the networking library, the date and time library, or the file system library. These will wait until a second library TR. I had hoped for much more, but the committee has so few resources and absolutely no funding for library development.
Have you or others working on C++0x had a lot of genuinely good ideas for new classes or facilities? If so, will all of them be used or will some have to be left out because of time and other constraints on developing a new standard? If that is the case, what would most likely be left out?
There is no shortage of good ideas in the committee or of good libraries in the wider C++ community. There are, however, severe limits to what a group of volunteers working without funding can do. What I expect to miss most will be thread pools and the file system library. However, please note that the work will proceed beyond '09 and that many libraries are already available; for example see what boost.org has to offer.
