C++ Templates

Templates are among the most powerful features of C++, but they remain misunderstood and underutilized, even as the C++ language and development community have advanced. In C++ Templates, Second Edition, three pioneering C++ experts show why, when, and how to use modern templates to build software that’s cleaner, faster, more efficient, and easier to maintain.

Now extensively updated for the C++11, C++14, and C++17 standards, this new edition presents state-of-the-art techniques for a wider spectrum of applications. The authors provide authoritative explanations of all new language features that either improve templates or interact with them, including variadic templates, generic lambdas, class template argument deduction, compile-time if, forwarding references, and user-defined literals. They also deeply delve into fundamental language concepts (like value categories) and fully cover all standard type traits.

The book starts with an insightful tutorial on basic concepts and relevant language features. The remainder of the book serves as a comprehensive reference, focusing first on language details and then on coding techniques, advanced applications, and sophisticated idioms. Throughout, examples clearly illustrate abstract concepts and demonstrate best practices for exploiting all that C++ templates can do.

• Understand exactly how templates behave, and avoid common pitfalls
• Use templates to write more efficient, flexible, and maintainable software
• Master today’s most effective idioms and techniques
• Reuse source code without compromising performance or safety
• Benefit from utilities for generic programming in the C++ Standard Library

Table of Contents

Part I: The Basics

1. Function Templates

2. Class Templates

3. Nontype Template Parameters

4. Variadic Templates

5. Tricky Basics

6. Move Semantics and enable_if<>

7. By Value or by Reference?

8. Compile-Time Programming

9. Using Templates in Practice

10. Basic Template Terminology

11. Generic Libraries

Part II: Templates in Depth

12. Fundamentals in Depth

13. Names in Templates

14. Instantiation

15. Template Argument Deduction

16. Specialization and Overloading

17. Future Directions

Part Ill: Templates and Design

18. The Polymorphic Power of Templates

19. Implementing Traits

20. Overloading on Type Properties

21. Templates and Inheritance

22. Bridging Static and Dynamic Polymorphism

23. Metaprogramming

24. Typelists

25. Tuples

26. Discriminated Unions

27. Expression Templates

28. Debugging Templates

A The One- Definition Rule

B. Value Categories

C. Overload Resolution

D. Standard Type Utilities

E. Concepts

About the Authors

David Vandevoorde started programming C++ in the late 1980s. After obtaining a PhD from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he became technical lead of Hewlett-Packard’s C++ compiler team. In 1999 he joined the Edison Design Group (EDG), whose C++ compiler technology is widely recognized as the industry’s most advanced. He is an active member of the C++ Standard Committee and a moderator of the newsgroup comp.lang.c++.moderated (which he co-founded). He is the author of C++ Solutions, the companion to The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition.

Nicolai M. Josuttis is well known for his best-selling de-facto standard bookThe C++ Standard Library – A Tutorial and Reference. He is an independent technical consultant who designs object-oriented software for the telecommunications, traffic, finance, and manufacturing industries. He is an active member of the C++ Standard Committee and a partner at System Bauhaus, a German group of prominent object-oriented system development experts. Josuttis has written several other books on object-oriented programming and C++.

Douglas Gregor is Senior Swift/C++/Objective-C Compiler Engineer at Apple. He holds a PhD in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and did post-doctoral work at Indiana University.