Question

Boost’s C99 stdint implementation is awfully handy. One thing bugs me, though. They dump all of their typedefs into the boost namespace. This leaves me with three choices when using this facility:

1. Use “using namespace boost“
2. Use “using boost::[u]<type><width>_t“
3. Explicitly refer to the target type with the boost:: prefix; e.g., boost::uint32_t foo = 0;

---

• Option № 1 kind of defeats the point of namespaces. Even if used within local scope (e.g., within a function), things like function arguments still have to be prefixed like option № 3.
• Option № 2 is better, but there are a bunch of these types, so it can get noisy.
• Option № 3 adds an extreme level of noise; the boost:: prefix is often ≥ to the length of the type in question.

---

My question is: What would be the most elegant way to bring all of these types into the global namespace? Should I just write a wrapper around boost/cstdint.hpp that utilizes option № 2 and be done with it?

---

Also, wrapping the header like so didn’t work on VC++ 10 (problems with standard library headers):

namespace Foo
{
  #include <boost/cstdint.hpp>

  namespace boost_alias = boost;
}

using namespace Foo::boost_alias;

---

EDIT: I guess another option is to use the preprocessor to make it work on VC 10? Taking the snippet above:

#ifndef FOO_HPP_INCLUDED
#define FOO_HPP_INCLUDED

#if _MSC_VER >= 1600 /*VC++ 10*/ || defined USE_NATIVE_STDINT_HEADER
  #include <stdint.h>
#else
  namespace cstdint_wrapper
  {
    #include <boost/cstdint.hpp>

    namespace boost_alias = boost;
  }

  using namespace cstdint_wrapper::boost_alias;
#endif

#endif

Less work, I guess?

Answer 1

I just use C99’s stdint.h (it’s actually now in VS 2010). For the versions of Visual C/C++ that don’t include it, I use a public domain version from MinGW that I modified to work with VC6 (from when I had to work in VC6):

• http://snipplr.com/view/18199/stdinth/

There are a couple other options you might consider in this SO question: C99 stdint.h header and MS Visual Studio

If you’d like to continue using boost/cstdint.hpp, I’d say that the suggestion of implementing a wrapper header that brings the types into the global namespace would be the way to go.

Does boost/cstdint.hpp provide anything I should know about that isn’t in stdint.h?