I would say yes, if the general consensus is that std::to_string is useful and should not be deprecated, then at least it should be made more generic.
The current list of overloads for std::to_string seems a bit arbitrary and incomplete to me, with char being the most error-prone example, as it happily binds to the overload taking int.
If you know you're dealing with ints, then I agree that std::to_string provides a more simple syntax for converting to a string, but in any generic code you either have to use std::format (i.e. forget about std::to_string), or do something like the following to delegate between the two:
template<typename T>
concept to_stringable =
std::is_same_v<T, int> ||
std::is_same_v<T, long> ||
std::is_same_v<T, long long> ||
std::is_same_v<T, unsigned> ||
std::is_same_v<T, unsigned long> ||
std::is_same_v<T, unsigned long long> ||
std::is_same_v<T, float> ||
std::is_same_v<T, double> ||
std::is_same_v<T, long double>;
template<typename T>
auto generic_to_string(const T& t) {
if constexpr (to_stringable<T>) {
return std::to_string(t);
} else {
return std::format("{}", t);
}
}
But the to_stringable concept is very brittle to maintain, because new overloads might be added in future versions of the standard, so a truly generic version of std::to_string would be more desirable in my view.