Re: Type-traits may have a hole as far as explicit-convertibility is concerned.

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:44:58 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<jr2dd1$bkr$1@dont-email.me>
Am 10.06.2012 07:02, schrieb Daryle Walker:

I decided to make the conversion operator only work when the
conversion from T to U is implicit. So I added an SFINAE condition:

//...
#include <type_traits>
#include <utility>
//...
      template <
          typename U,
          typename std::enable_if<
              std::is_convertible<T, U>::value,
              std::nullptr_t
          >::type...
      >
      constexpr
      operator MyArray<U,N>() const;
//...

I used the index_tuple trick to implement this member function
template, returning a brace-initializer expression.


What is a "brace-initializer expression"? Do you mean a braced-init-list
such as

{ /expression-list/ };

? This is *no* expression.

I also wonder why you added the std::nullptr_t argument. You could just
remove it, because std::enable_if has a default template type of void.

Then I decided
to extend this with a second conversion operator, this time for
types that can convert non-implicitly:

//...
      template <
          typename V,
          typename std::enable_if<
              !std::is_convertible<T, V>::value
              && std::is_constructible<V, T const &>::value,
              std::nullptr_t
          >::type...
      >
      explicit constexpr
      operator MyArray<V,N>() const;
//...

The internal code is just like the first operator, but the
initializers around surrounded by "static_cast<V>" before variadic
expansion.


Well yes, static_cast is different from a direct-initialization. Btw.
you don't even need a class enum for this. The same kind of static_cast
conversion is necessary when you convert a classic (i.e. unscoped)
enumeration type to arithmetic type.

Now I needed to test this code with two types that convert, but not
implicitly. (I've been using the built-in arithmetic types, but all
conversions between them are implicit, even the narrowing ones!) I
thought making a custom class-type type with explicit constructors
and/or operators for this, but decided to go with the new-fangled
enum-class type, which don't have the implicit conversions to int
that classic enums do.

I hit a wall, but it was a good thing I did it, since I would have
missed a use case if I used a class-type.

When converting between an enum-class and a built-in numeric type,
you need to explicitly write a "static_cast":

//...
      enum class two_bit_t
          : unsigned
      { zero, one, two, three };

     two_bit_t const v = two_bit_t::two;
     unsigned const vv = v; // ERROR
     unsigned const vv{ v }; // ERROR
     auto const vv = static_cast<unsigned>( v ); // WORKS
//...

My tests had a conversion between MyArray<two_bit_t,N> and
MyArray<unsigned,N>, but it never triggered. After trying many
guesses, I got this to work:

//...
      // Comment out BOTH of the previous conversion operators
      template < typename W >
      constexpr
      operator MyArray<W,N>() const;
//...

This operator template called the internal function that used a
"static_cast" wrapper. But why didn't the previous version work?
Because static_cast covers implicit conversions; conversions that
can use the constructor(-like) syntax, which std::is_constructible
covers; plus several others! Enum-class to built-in integer is one
of those other conversions.


Correct. Another situation is a cast from void* to int*, or the
conversion of Base& to Derived&.

I can't use SFINAE to restrict conversions just to explicitly-
convertible types; I have to make a general version (or general
minus implicit) and just have the compiler choke within the
conversion function when it encounters two types with no static_cast
path, instead of having it error-out in advance via SFINAE.

(Does anyone know of a better workaround?)


What you are asking for is a trait like is_static_castable. This is
really very easy to implement, e.g. like so:

#include <utility>

struct is_static_castable_impl
{
    template<class From, class To, class =
      decltype(static_cast<To>(std::declval<From>()))
    >
    static std::true_type test(int);

    template<class, class>
    static std::false_type test(...);
};

template<class From, class To>
struct is_static_castable :
    decltype(is_static_castable_impl::test<From, To>(0))
{
};

The problem for us is that there is NO type-trait class template
that covers explicit conversions that only have the static_cast
operator as their only path (besides C-casts). We should add this,
and the trivial & no-throw variants, to the TS2 (or whatever we're
calling the next minor update to C++).


I weakly agree, because this trait is really easy to implement, see
above. I used is_static_castable internally to implement
is_constructible as a pure library-based emulation, because the hard
part of implementing is_constructible is the two-argument-case. This is
so, because the most natural way to emulate this is to use a functional
cast using an expression of the form T(std::declval<U>()), but this is
equivalent to the "C cast": (T) std::declval<U>(). is_static_castable
helps to filter away the otherwise valid reinterpret_cast and const_cast
interpretations, so you can then - in a second step - filter away the
remaining cases that are unique for static_cast compared to direct
initialization.

Before adding is_static_castable and it's nothrow/trivially variants I
rather would prefer to see is_nothrow_convertible and
is_trivially_convertible, which are really missing given the
corresponding is_XX_constructible traits.

Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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