CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++templates
Abdelrahman Ramadan
Abdelrahman Ramadan

Reputation: 153

is there a way to put condition on constant value parameter in C++ template specialization?

is there's a way to constrain the integral template parameter as specialization instead of this code redundancy ?

// redundant code

template <int N>
struct A {};
template <>
struct A <0> {};
template <>
struct A <1> {};

// what i want is some thing like this

template <int N>
struct A {};

template <>
struct A <N < 2> {};

Upvotes: 3

Views: 719

Answers (2)

Walter
Walter

Reputation: 45414

You could use SFINAE="Substitution Failure Is Not An Error". There are several ways this could be done here, for example

template<int N, typename E=void>
struct A { /* ... */ };     // general type

template<int N>
struct A<N, std::enable_if_t<(N<2)> >
{ /* ... */ };              // specialisation for N<2

Note that std::enable_if_t<> is a C++14 type, it's equivalent to

template<bool C, typename T=void>
using enable_if_t = typename std::enable_if<C,T>::type;

How does it work? The definition of std::enable_if is similar to

template<bool C, typename T=void>
struct enable_if { using type=T; };

template<typename T>
struct enable_if<false,T> {};

In particular, there is no sub-type enable_if::type in case the condition C is false. Thus in the above specialisation enable_if_t<(N<2)> expands to a valid type (void) only for N<2. For N>=2, we have substitution failure, since enable_if<(N<2)>::type does not exist. C++ allows such failure, but simply ignores the resulting (invalid) code.

Upvotes: 6

Ross Smith
Ross Smith

Reputation: 3765

You could add a second template parameter, with a default value that selects the specialization you want:

template <int N, bool = (N < 2)>
struct A {
    // code for N>=2 case
};

template <int N>
struct A<N, true> {
    // code for N<2 case
};

(You don't need to name the second parameter since you'll never be referring to it explicitly.)

Upvotes: 2

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