Re: [Boost-users] [lexical_cast] How is the degenerate case handled?

I recall that function templates cannot be partially specialised, so we (or the user in question) would have to do complete specialisation instead, so the given type would have to be known.

Okay, so function templates can't be partially specialized like that, but class templates can, and classes can have static member functions. So how about template Target lexical_cast(const Source& arg) { return lexical_cast_impl::cast(arg); } template class lexical_cast_impl { inline static cast(const Source& arg) { /* ... */ } }; //partial specialization for Target = Source template<class Target> class lexical_cast_impl { inline static cast(const Source& arg) {return arg;} }; --Jeffrey Bosboom