Re: C++ boxing

From:
Juan Pedro Bolivar Puente <magnicida@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:33:23 CST
Message-ID:
<hl9q5t$1bv$1@news.bytemine.net>
On 13/02/10 00:43, pfultz2 wrote:

Is there a way to box a type in c++ like this:

class Interface
{
public:
    virtual void foo() = 0;
};

class A
{
public:
    void foo();
};

And then I could box this type like this:
Interface * a = box_cast<Interface*>(new A());


There is no general way to do it, but for your specific interface you
can write something like:

template <Boxed>
class InterfaceBox : public Interface
{
   std::auto_ptr<Boxed> m_boxed;

public:
   InterfaceBox (Boxed* boxed) : m_boxed (boxed) {}

   void foo () { m_boxed->foo (); }
};

template<Boxed>
Interface* box_interface (Boxed* boxed)
{
   return new InterfaceBox<Boxed> (boxed);
}

....
Interface* boxed_a = box_interface (new A);
....
delete boxed_a;
....

Of course, you can decide to have a different memory management policicy
for the boxed type in case you still want to be able to use the A*
intance in other parts of the program, like using a shared_ptr, or a raw
pointer or whatever fits your needs. You could templatize that also...

JP

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