Re: Would templates make this simpler?

From:
"Doug Harrison [MVP]" <dsh@mvps.org>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:59:45 -0500
Message-ID:
<kav6331qpha8a5t8s6a62hfkni89cmls37@4ax.com>
On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:07:25 -0700, "David Ching"
<dc@remove-this.dcsoft.com> wrote:

I do not think templates would make this any easier, but thought I would
verify with the experts here.


FWIW, you'll find far more template expertise in
microsoft.public.vc.language and far, far more in comp.lang.c++.moderated.

I have a base class and 2 derived ones:

class CBase
{
public:
   virtual void Method1();
};

class CDerived1 : public CBase
{
public:
   virtual void Method1();
};

class CDerived2 : public CBase
{
public:
   virtual void Method1();
};

Now I need to instantiate the correct one based on a flag:

CBase *CreateTheClass(bool flag)
{
   if (flag)
       return new CDerived1;
   else
       return new CDerived2;
}

Could I get rid of the if() if I just created something like

   return new CBase<flag>;


It's not going to work since templates are a compile-time mechanism, and
flag isn't known until run-time. Since you want to create CDerived
instances, it's not the right approach anyway. I guess the closest you
could come using templates is to do something like this:

template<bool X> class Derived;

template<>
class Derived<true> : public CBase
{
   ...
};

template<>
class Derived<false> : public CBase
{
   ...
};

CBase* p1 = new Derived<true>;
CBase* p2 = new Derived<false>;

But that still doesn't solve your problem, because your bool value isn't
known until run-time.

--
Doug Harrison
Visual C++ MVP

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