Re: Multimethods idioms and library support

From:
itaj sherman <itajsherman@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:23:05 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<3f848282-d123-408d-8d25-de12b0f2eca7@u6g2000vbh.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 22, 7:02 pm, Larry Evans <cppljev...@suddenlink.net> wrote:

On 02/22/11 10:32, itaj sherman wrote:
[snip]

I'm sorry what I say here is not 100% formally clear. It's more like a
brainstorm to evaluate idioms for multimethods.

itaj


Hi ita,

If g++ is available, you can use the -std=gnu++0x option to enable
variadic templates and then use the code demonstrated the
test driver here:

 http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/variadic_templates
    /libs/composite_storage/sandbox/pack
    /one_of_multiple_dispatch.test.cpp

to do multimethods. Note that that demo uses 2 different methods.
One uses a disjoint union data type (the one with the one_of_maybe tag)
the other uses virtual methods (which is the one you're interested in).
To select the virtual method version, include:

  #define REIFIER_VISITOR

in the driver.


So, after I managed to check out the code, it makes more sense.

But, tell me if the following is correct:
using this library on a hirarchy of classes and a certain multimethod.
- I have to collect the declarations of all different overrides in the
same functor class, like functor3 and functor_any do.
- I have to collect all the concrete classes of the hirarchy in one
list, as under hosts_concrete<>

If so, I think this API doesn't solve the main disadvantages I see
with the dynamic_cast idiom.

In my example it would look about:
* except I'm not sure what should be ResultType in there, becuase
hunt() returns void, but what happens if other multimethods return
other types?

struct Carnivours_concrete
  : mpl::package< Lion, Anaconda, Bear >
{
};

class Carnivour
{
  typedef reifier_visit_abstract_seq< ResultType
    , typename Carnivours_concrete::type>
  visitor_abstract;

  virtual ResultType accept( visitor_abstract const&)const=0;
};

class Lion: public Carnivour
{
  ...

  ResultType accept( visitor_abstract const& a_visitor)const
  {
    return a_visitor.visit(*this);
  }
};

class hunt_functor
{

  void operator()( Lion const&, Gazelle& )
  {
    //jumps on it and bite its neck
  }

  //and same for:
  void operator()( Lion const&, Girrafe& )
  {
    //bite its ass
  }

  void operator()( Anaconda const&, Gazelle& )
  {
    //inject venom

  }

  //Anaconda can't kill girrafes so no override for that one

  void operator()( Bear const&, Prey& )
  {
    //because Bears catch everything in the same way lol.

  }

};

itaj

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