Re: Is const char* an exception in a template specification?

From:
SG <s.gesemann@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 19 May 2009 13:22:54 CST
Message-ID:
<80bb23cd-861f-4ce2-8d32-30d75903e167@g19g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>
On 18 Mai, 22:38, SG <s.gesem...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 18 Mai, 03:12, DeMarcus <use_my_alias_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:

template<class T>
class A {


[snip]

template<>
class A<const char*> {


[snip]

template<class T>
void foo( const T& t )
{
    A<T> bar(t);
}

main()
{
    foo( "Hello" );
}

But the code does not use my specialized const char* template.


This is because of the type deduction rules, you taking 't' by
reference, and the literal "Hello" being an lvalue of type "const char
[6]". If you let the compiler deduce the type T and take 't' by
reference it'll use T = const char[6] instead of T = const char*.
However, if you take 't' by value T is going to be a pointer to const
char.


Correction: T is deduced to be char[6]. But 't' is of type "const char
(&)[6]" because the const in "const T" propagates down to the array's
element type. A corrected version of the solution I mentioned earlier
is:

  #include <iostream>
  #include <cstddef>

  // compile-time type transformation
  template<typename T>
    struct ptr_decay {typedef T type;};
  template<typename T>
    struct ptr_decay<T[]> {typedef T* type;};
  template<typename T, std::size_t N>
    struct ptr_decay<T[N]> {typedef T* type;};

  template<typename T>
  class A {
  public:
    A() {std::cout << "A<T>::A()\n";}
  };

  template<>
  class A<const char*> {
  public:
    A() {std::cout << "A<const char*>::A()\n";}
  };

  template<typename T>
  void foo(const T& t) {
    // adjust type manually (array-to-pointer conversion) ...
    typedef typename ptr_decay<const T>::type decayed_t;
    A<decayed_t> a; // note: ^^^^^ (added const)
  }

  int main() {
    foo("Hello");
  }

This will print

  A<const char*>::A()

without the need to do extra specializations of A or explicitly
specifying the template parameter T for foo or altering foo to take
the parameter by value.

Cheers!
SG

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