On 25 Jun 2026 16:33, Rune Lund Olesen via Std-Proposals wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> The current std::byte has some deep issues in that it is too opaque to
> the point it is flawed by design.
> (we know it is in reality a scoped enum).
> Especially this comes up in generic code where it is cumbersome to add
> specializations because it is not a fundamental type.
>
> A "better" way would be a real fundamental type or struct that mimicks it...
>
> Overall it should at least behave like a fundamental uint8_t/unsigned
> char in most respects
> and be easy to convert to/from...
> except ofc. it shouldn't be an arithmetic type and it shouldn't be
> treated like a textual "char" as we know.
>
> See below for a quick draft up...

The world has more or less settled on unsigned char/uint8_t as the type
for raw bytes. std::byte was a failure exactly because it is
sufficiently different and requires casts all over the place, and
because it is not a fundamental type (i.e. requires a header include).
Introducing a built-in type solves the latter but not the former.

IMHO, just give up and stop pretending that bytes aren't uint8_t.
Restricting arithmetics on bytes isn't much of a benefit anyway,
especially when you want to do arithmetics (e.g. when you're parsing
from raw bytes).