Re: Portable list of unsigned integer types

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:50:24 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<f6dbc782-8f9f-4e85-96f2-84b3e4a96a49@j32g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 13, 12:31 pm, "Fred Zwarts" <F.Zwa...@KVI.nl> wrote:

Kai-Uwe Bux wrote:

Fred Zwarts wrote:

I have created a template function for a generic algorithm. For
unsigned integer types, a small modification in the algorithm is
needed, because I can't use negative values there. So, I want to
make specializations for all unsigned integer types.


Maybe the following helps:

 template < typename T >
 struct is_signed {
   static bool const value = 0 > T(-1);
 };

I assume that it is not possible in C++ to write one specialization
for all unsigned integer type, but that a specialization for each
unsigned integer type must be created.


No, but you could do:

 template < typename T, bool IsSigned = is_signed<T>::value >
 struct ...

and partially specialize that for <T,true> and <T,false>.

[...]


I tried something along these lines, but it turned out to my surprise,
that partial specializations are not allowed for template functions,
only for template classes/structs. Of course I could encapsulate the
function in a class and add a wrapper function...


Or you could forward to an overloaded function, something like:

    template< bool > class Discrim {};

    template< typename T >
    void helper( T value, Discrim< false > )
    {
        // signed...
    }

    template< typename T >
    void helper( T value, Discrim< true > )
    {
        // unsigned...
    }

    template< typename T >
    void function( T value )
    {
        helper( value, Discrim< is_signed< T >::value >() ) ;
    }

If you're doing a lot of this (or even more than once), you'll have
Discrim already written, and maybe even is_signed, so all that's left
is
the two overloads. (I don't claim that this is a better or a worse
solution than the partial specializations suggested by Kai-Uwe---I
generally use his method myself. But it's an alternative you might
consider.)

--
James Kanze

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