Re: Template hierarchy question

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:09:08 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<7ac627ea-8cb0-4820-b787-bac26027aca9@n58g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 19, 2:31 pm, Inso Reiges <Insorei...@gmail.com> wrote:

I`m not a native english speaker, so please bear with me.

I`ve inherited a template library codebase. This library is
using a mixin approach and passes a concrete class type down
the inheritance tree in template parameter, as such:

template <class T> class Base {};
template <class T> class Der1 : public Base<T> {};
....
template <class T> class DerN : public DerN_minus_1<T> {};

The given hierarchy is simplified and uses multiple inheritance in
real code.

I have to make concrete (non-templated) classes on top of this
hierarchy:

class C1 : public DerN<C1> {};
class C2 : public DerN<C2> {};
...

Now, i have a collector class, that has to register all those C
classes somewhere inside it, like this:

class Collector { private: std::list<SomeType> mylist; };

But, as you know, i can not use templates for SomeType,
because compiler needs a concrete type. But i have to register
C classes in a single collection and C classes have to be on
top of the template inheritance hierarchy.

Could you please advise a solution?


You can't do it directly, since Base isn't a class. You have
two basic possible solutions:

 -- use something like boost::any, or

 -- create an artificial polymorphic base class, multiply
    inherit from it in your concrete classes, and maintain a
    list of pointers to it, e.g.:

        class Listable
        {
        public:
            virtual ~Listable() {}
        } ;

        class C1 : public DerN<C1>, public Listable {} ;
        class C2 : public DerN<C2>, public Listable {} ;
        // ...

        std::list< Listable* > myList ;

    This means, of course, that you'll have to handle lifetime
    issues yourself, however.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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