can abseil-cpp support AbslStringify for char/unsigned char?

[chenchuanyin]

When I AbslStringify for type char, but the output of absl::HasAbslStringify::value is false, is it by design?

template
void AbslStringify(Sink &sink, char u)
{
sink.Append("%d", u);
}

[derekmauro]

This is by design because it is potentially error-prone. Sometimes the user may want to print that char, and sometimes the user may want to print the integer value (consider the type alias uint8_t). We decided it is better to be explicit about what it should print:

char x = 120;
absl::StrCat(absl::string_view(&x, 1));  // "x"
absl::StrCat(static_cast<int>(x));  // "120"

[chenchuanyin]

Thank you for the quick reply.

[MBkkt]

@derekmauro What do you think about adding explicit type for char as strings?

absl::StrCat(absl::Hex{...});
absl::StrCat(absl::Chr2Str{...})

The main issue with string_view approach, it doesn't work for rvalue (macros value from 3rdParty library for an example)