Book Image

Template Metaprogramming with C++

By : Marius Bancila
5 (1)
Book Image

Template Metaprogramming with C++

5 (1)
By: Marius Bancila

Overview of this book

Learn how the metaprogramming technique enables you to create data structures and functions that allow computation to happen at compile time. With this book, you'll realize how templates help you avoid writing duplicate code and are key to creating generic libraries, such as the standard library or Boost, that can be used in a multitude of programs. The introductory chapters of this book will give you insights into the fundamentals of templates and metaprogramming. You'll then move on to practice writing complex templates and exploring advanced concepts such as template recursion, template argument deduction, forwarding references, type traits, and conditional compilation. Along the way, you'll learn how to write variadic templates and how to provide requirements to the template arguments with C++20 constraints and concepts. Finally, you'll apply your knowledge of C++ metaprogramming templates to implement various metaprogramming patterns and techniques. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to write effective templates and implement metaprogramming in your everyday programming journey.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Core Template Concepts
5
Part 2: Advanced Template Features
9
Part 3: Applied Templates
Appendix: Closing Notes

Composing constraints

We have seen multiple examples of constraining template arguments but in all the cases so far, we used a single constraint. It is possible though for constraints to be composed using the && and || operators. A composition of two constraints using the && operator is called a conjunction and the composition of two constraints using the || operator is called a disjunction.

For a conjunction to be true, both constraints must be true. Like in the case of logical AND operations, the two constraints are evaluated from left to right, and if the left constraint is false, the right constraint is not evaluated. Let’s look at an example:

template <typename T>
requires std::is_integral_v<T> && std::is_signed_v<T>
T decrement(T value) 
{
   return value--;
}

In this snippet, we have a function template that returns the decremented value of the received argument. However, it only accepts signed integral...