Best way to create true wrapper?

From:
Jan Lellmann <GCAQDUVJYYIJ@spammotel.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:17:26 +0100
Message-ID:
<7lpcdpF3ens2kU1@mid.individual.net>
Hello,

I'm currently trying to interface an existing (non-modifiable) class to
other code and wondering what's the best way to create the wrappers. Let's
say I have the following code:

----
class Vec {
public:
     virtual double& el(int i) = 0;
     virtual double el(int i) const = 0;
};

class ThirdpartyVec; // does not inherit from Vec and cannot be changed

void constfunc(const Vec& v) {
     cout << "constfunc: " << v.el(0) << endl;
}

void nonconstfunc(Vec& v) {
     v.el(0) = 1;
}

class Wrapper : public Vec {
private:
     const ThirdpartyVector& inner;
public:
     Wrapper(const ThirdpartyVector& _inner) : inner(_inner) {};
     virtual double& el(int i) { return ThirdPartyGetRef(inner,i); };
     virtual double el(int i) const { return ThirdPartyGetValue(inner,i); };
}
----

Now ideally I would like the user to be able to write

   ThirdpartyVector tpv;
   constfunc(tpv);
   nonconstfunc(tpv);

and the wrapper objects should be created accordingly. As an alternative, I
could imagine providing a wrap() function, so the code could read

   ThirdpartyVector tpv;
   constfunc(wrap(tpv));
   nonconstfunc(wrap(tpv));

However the above approaches cannot work for the call to nonconstfunc, as
C++ does not allow to cast the temporary to a nonconst reference.

Do you know of any good approach to this problem?

Regards,
   Jan

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