Marco Costalba wrote:
This is a simple yet interesting object factory.
Please see http://tinyurl.com/35vlvb . It seems with that factory utility one could achieve the semantics of your proposal somehow like this (note: untested code for illustration only - see docs and tests): // create a map of functions map< string, function<base_t*(arg1_t,arg2_t)> > f; // register factories f[ "T1" ] = factory<T1>(); // note that this one works too: f[ "T2" ] = bind( factory<T2>(), another_arg, _1, _2); // invoke them base_t* new_t1 = f["T1"](arg1,arg2); base_t* new_t2 = f["T2"](arg1,arg2); It's pretty flexible, isn't it? It also works with smart pointers and there's a variant for by-value construction :-). Regards, Tobias