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Thanks, but I was just looking for a better way to convert a string to upper case, not an arbitrary collection of chars. I've never yet needed to upper-case anything other than a string and unless I get the urge to write a text editor (unlikely!) I doubt I ever will.

And yes it's trivial to wrap this in a function, but in my opinion it really shouldn't be necessary. It's such a simple and common-place operation, why isn't it in the standard library?

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a better way to convert a string to upper case, not an arbitrary collection of chars

just a sidenote - this is exactly the opposite of the way of thinking the STL promotes: in STL terms, you do want a generic operation on an arbitrary collection of anything that happens be compatible with toupper. Shouldn't even be a char, let the compiler figure that out. And as it turns out, std::string happens to fit in nicely.

I think that sums up nicely why I don't particularly like the STL: it's that mindset. It's all well and good having a generic operation over an arbitrary collection of anything, but sometimes you just want to get stuff done. All that generality adds distance between your code and the problem you're trying to solve with it. It's obfuscation.

Edit: I hope that doesn't sound too combative - I'm just trying to explain myself, not saying that you're wrong.

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