Re: Automatic function result type adaption depending on arg?

From:
werasm <werasm@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:07:11 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<afa03bb8-7b5e-412a-b974-f4ebbc926938@z11g2000yqz.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 7, 2:33 am, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote:

I have e.g.

     template< typename T >
     inline typename T::iterator startOf( T& c )
     {
         return c.begin();
     }

     template< typename T >
     inline typename T::const_iterator startOf( T const& c )
     {
         return c.begin();
     }

     template< typename T, Size N >
     inline T* startOf( T (&a)[N] )
     {
         return a;
     }

Types from the standard library use 'iterator' and 'const_iterator', but =

imagine

some other large set of types TheirOwnWay with e.g. 'Iter' and 'ConstIter=

', and

that those types are in numeruous different namespaces.

How can the functions above be modified so that it's simple to make them =

work

also with TheirOwnWay types, e.g. by defining some type trait thing?

I tried the to me "obvious" customization hook, like

     template< typename T >
     inline typename IterTrait<T>::T startOf( T& c ) ...

keeping the last overload above as-is, but this failed spectacularly when
calling startOf(a) where a is a raw array.


I came up with the code below. CProxy would have to be specialized for
non standard containers (as for array). Unfortunately one needs the
extra call to c_proxy function template to resolve T, but IMO bettern
than specifying the template parameter:

#include <vector>

template <class T>
struct CProxy
{
  typedef typename T::iterator iterator;
  typedef T& ContRefT;

  explicit CProxy( ContRefT c ): c_( c ){}
  ContRefT c_;
};

template <class T, int N>
struct CProxy<T(&)[N]>
{
  typedef T* iterator;
  typedef T(&ContRefT)[N];

  struct ArrayWrapper
  {
    ArrayWrapper( ContRefT c ): c_( c ){}
    iterator begin() const { return &c_[0]; }
    //...end etc...
    ContRefT c_;
  };

  explicit CProxy( ContRefT c ): c_( c ){}
  ArrayWrapper c_;
};

template <class ContT>
CProxy<ContT> c_proxy( ContT c )
{
  return CProxy<ContT>( c );
}
template <class T, int N>
CProxy<T(&)[N]> c_proxy( T(&a)[N] )
{
  return CProxy<T(&)[N]>( a );
}

template< typename T >
inline typename CProxy<T>::iterator
startOf( CProxy<T> cproxy )
{
  return cproxy.c_.begin();
}

int main()
{
  char array[5];
  char* a =
    startOf( c_proxy(array) );

  const std::vector<char> vect;
  std::vector<char>::iterator b =
    startOf( c_proxy(vect) );

}

Kind regards,

Werner

I'd rather avoid using Boost enable_if (or any Boost dependency).

Cheers,

- Alf

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