Class Templates

• Stroustrup says
  • Templates add flexibility
  • They have nearly optimal performance.
• One word of caution, the compiler will not generate code that is not needed.
  • So if you don't test thoroughly, you may have a syntax error in your code you do not discover.
  • This is particularly problematic if you have a class method that is not called.
• The standard container library is built on top of this.
  • Again, we will study this in more detail later.
• The basic concept remains the same
  • To keep things familiar you can do the class declaration and class implementation in different steps (ie the old .h and .cpp file)
  • You will need to each function in separate template statements
  • And you will need the strange construct

    template < typename T> 
    FooT<T>:FooT () {
    }
            

• Look at ArrayT.h
  • I wrapped everything in a template wrapper,
  • made the changes above,
  • deleted ItemType and changed all ItemTypes to T
• In the test file, I needed to make a few small changes.
  • ArrayT became ArrayT<int>