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

Appendix: Closing Notes

We are now at the end of this book. Templates are not the easiest part of C++ programming. Indeed, people usually find them difficult or horrendous. However, templates are heavily used in C++ code, and it’s likely that whatever kind of code you’re writing, you’ll be using templates daily.

We started the book by learning what templates are and why we need them. We then learned how to define function templates, class templates, variable templates, and alias templates. We learned about template parameters, specialization, and instantiation. In the third chapter, we learned about templates with variable numbers of arguments, which are called variadic templates. The next chapter was dedicated to more advanced template concepts, such as name binding, recursion, argument deduction, and forwarding references.

We then learned about the use of type traits, SFINAE, and constexpr if, and we explored the collection of type traits available in...