Re: Best way to create true wrapper?

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