Why doesn't GLib's GValue system include string to number transformations?

Question

The GValue system in GLib includes standard type transformations using GType descriptors (in fact the GValue reference page includes some sample code that transforms a value from int to string).

However, as one can also see from the gvaluetransform source code, transformations from string to numeric values are not included by default. I suppose that parsing strings to integers is a quite commonly used feature. Is there a specific reason we need to manually supply transformation functions for string parsing (portability perhaps)?

Answer 1

This was left out because there's no way to report or handle errors in GValue transformations.