Re: About the instantiation of a template class

From:
 James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:38:43 -0000
Message-ID:
<1192178323.429322.91290@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 12, 4:31 am, Adam Nielsen <adam.niel...@remove.this.uq.edu.au>
wrote:

void operator+(A<T> lhs, A<T> rhs) {


This function takes two objects of the A class.


This is not a function, but a template. It only becomes a
function when instantiated.

    obj + t;


But here you're calling operator+ with one A object and one int.


Here, you're asking the compiler to deduce the types for the
above template, and instantiate it using the deduced types.

1. error C2784: 'void operator +(A<T>,A<T>)' : could not deduce
template argument for 'A<T>' from 'int'


The compiler is complaining that it doesn't know how to convert an int
into an A<something> object.


No. The compiler knows how to convert an int into an A<int>
object, which is what is wanted. The problem here is that the
rules for type deduction do not allow the compiler to deduce the
arguments for the operator+ template, so it cannot instantiate
the function.

If you used two A objects it would work:

A<int> obj(5);
A<int> obj2(5);
obj + obj2;

You could also rewrite your + operator so that the object
doesn't need to be an instance of A<something>:

  void operator+(A<T> lhs, T rhs)

Or alternatively it may be possible to define an operator that
allows an int to be converted into an A<int> - sorry, I'm not
sure of the exact syntax. (I would've thought the constructor
would be called implicitly though - perhaps someone can
enlighten us.)


The usual solution here would be something along the lines of:

    template< typename T >
    class A
        : public Operators< A< T > >
        , public MixedOperators< A< T >, T >
    {
    public:
        // ...
        A& operator+=( A const& other ) ;
    } ;

with the usual definitions for Operators and MixedOperators:

    template< typename T >
    class Operators
    {
    public:
        friend T operator+( T const& lhs, T const& rhs )
        {
            T result( lhs ) ;
            result += rhs ;
            return result ;
        }
        // And so on for the other operators...
    } ;

    template< typename T1, typename T2 >
    class MixedOperators
    {
    public:
        friend T1 operator+( T1 const& lhs, T2 const& rhs )
        {
            T1 result( lhs ) ;
            result += rhs ; // Note that here, template
                                // type deduction isn't needed,
                                // so the compiler will find
                                // any necessary conversions.
            return result ;
        }
        // And so on for the other operators...
        friend T1 operator+( T2 const& lhs, T1 const& rhs )
        {
            T1 result( rhs ) ;
            result += lhs ;
            return result ;
        }
        // And so on for the other commutative operators...
    } ;

(Note that in this solution, there are no function
templates:-).)

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orient=E9e objet/
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