Virtual templated functions. Previously: Preserving const? -- A potential solution

[Michel Fortin]

On 2009-03-08 06:38:13 -0400, "Tim M" <a at b.com> said:

>> Avoiding dynamic instantiation, you HAVE to know what template instances
>> are going to be needed at compile time.  You can't wave your hands and
>> make it go away.
> 
> I'm not saying guess the template instance. I'm saying use the same 
> exact  types for instance in class A to instantiate template in class B 
> where the  signature is exactly the same. There is absolutely no guess 
> work as  everything is KNOWN.

If you introduce a way to limit templates to what generics can do in 
Java and C#, you can have virtual template functions. Java and C# 
generics can do only do a subset of what templates can do, but this 
ensure there's only one compiled code instanciation. So perhaps 
non-final non-static member template functions could be constrained to 
generic-like operations and thus could become virtual.

I remembrer myself proposing this a few months ago, but it didn't caught on.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/