user-defined types and basic_string

[Benjamin Kosnik]

> I was unable to implicitly create characters from integers :
> 
> basic_string<char_type> theString;
> theString.append(0x20);
> theString.append('o');
> 
> No amount of casting was able to fix this, and constructors in character<T> 
> will not work because then it isn't Plain Old Data (POD??).  With a 
> constructor it can't be used in a union, among other problems.

Right. This is what is lame about user-defined types being aggregates.

> I ended up not using templates at all, instead just defining char_traits as:
> 
> namespace std
> {
>   struct char_traits<unsigned short>
>   {
>     typedef unsigned short 	 char_type;
>     .
>     .
>     .
> 
>   };
> };
> 
> Unless you know of an 'elegant' way to go from an int to a character, this 
> will have to do.

Nope. 

What you are doing (I'm assuming specializing std::char_traits<int>,
instantating std::basic_string<int>), is undefined but I believe it
should be defined to be something useful.

-benjamin