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Alt text:

A screenshot from the linked article titled “Reflection in C++26”, showing reflection as one of the bullet points listed in the “Core Language” section

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    You already can do that with C++20 concepts and the requires expression

    template <typename T>
    concept has_member_foo = requires(T t) {
        t.foo();
    };
    
    // Will fail to instantiate (with nice error 
    // message) if t.foo() is ill-formed
    template <has_member_foo T>
    void bar(T t) {
        // ...
    }
    
    // abbreviated form of above
    void baz(has_member_foo auto t) {
        // ...
    }
    
    // verbose form of above
    template <typename T> requires
        has_member_foo<T>
    void biz(T t) {
        // ...
    }
    
    // same as above but with anonymous concept
    template <typename T> requires
        requires(T t) { t.foo(); }
    void bom(T t) {
        // ...
    }
    
    // If already inside a function
    if constexpr (has_member_foo<T>) {
        // ...
    }
    
    // Same but with anonymous concept
    if constexpr (requires(T t) { t.foo(); }) {
        // ...
    }
    
    • Sonotsugipaa
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      2
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      1 month ago

      I imagine reflections would make the process more straightforward, requires expressions are powerful but either somewhat verbose or possibly incomplete.

      For instance, in your example foo could have any of the following declarations in a class:

      • void foo();
      • int foo() const;
      • template <typename T> foo(T = { }) &&;
      • decltype([]() { }) foo;
      • @[email protected]
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        1 month ago

        I’m not sure if there’s anything enable_if can do that concepts can’t do somewhat better but yeah there’s definitely a lot of subtleties that reflection is going to make nicer or possible in the first place

        • Sonotsugipaa
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          21 month ago

          Oh, std::enable_if is straight up worse, they’re unreadable and don’t work when two function overloads (idk about variables) have the same signature.

          I’m not even sure enable_if can do something that constraints can’t at all…