Re: Comparison operator overload via base classes.

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:45:51 CST
Message-ID:
<4b4976c4-8a74-4970-a382-72699b0ba9b3@33g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>
On 16 Mrz., 05:28, usenet only_tech_talk <usenet.tech.t...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Please consider :

struct A{};
template<typename T> struct B{};
struct C : B< C >{};
struct D : B< D >{};

template<typename T,typename R>
bool operator==(const B<T>&,const R&){}
template<typename T,typename L>
bool operator==(const L&,const B<T>&){}

One would hope this is all that is needed:

int main (int argc, char * const argv[]) {

     A a; C c1,c2; D d1,d2;
     c1 == a;
     c1 == c2;
     c1 == d2;
     d1 == d2;
     d2 == d1;

     return 0;

}

but of course not (ambiguous overload). So in a second round of naive
hope, one tries:

template<typename T,typename T1>
bool operator==(const B<T>&,const B<T1>&){}

before accepting the ugly truth:

bool operator==(const C&,const C&){}
bool operator==(const D&,const D&){}
bool operator==(const C&,const D&){}
bool operator==(const D&,const C&){}

Is this the end of the road, or is there something more scalable?


I believe it should be possible to go with three overloads:

template<class T>
struct IsBaseOfB {
   static const bool value = std::is_base_of<B<T>, T>::value;
};

// Use std::is_base_of from <type_traits> if your compiler
// provides that or use boost::is_base_of otherwise.

template<typename L, typename R>
typename std::enable_if<IsBaseOfB<L>::value && !IsBaseOfB<R>::value,
bool>::type
operator==(const L&, const R&){ return true; }

template<typename L, typename R>
typename std::enable_if<!IsBaseOfB<L>::value && IsBaseOfB<R>::value,
bool>::type
operator==(const L&, const R&){ return true; }

template<typename L, typename R>
typename std::enable_if<IsBaseOfB<L>::value && IsBaseOfB<R>::value,
bool>::type
operator==(const L&, const R&){ return true; }

HTH & Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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