John Maddock wrote:
there's an opportunity here to remove all that obfuscation and crud and produce something that's actually halfway readable and maintainable.
Just on the topic of maintenance:
A C++17 style voider works with GCC 3.2 and later, VS8 and later and various HP aCC, Sun Studio, Intel and other compilers listed here:
https://open.cdash.org/index.php?project=CMake&date=2015-01-05
Only VS 7.1 chokes on it.
What's a C++ 17 style voider?
See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n3911.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=a0FliKwcwXE#t=1740 Even if using VS8, GCC3.2 etc you can still do this: template<typename> struct voider { typedef void type; }; struct true_type { enum { value = true }; }; struct false_type { enum { value = false }; }; template<typename T, typename = void> struct HasSecondType : false_type {}; template<typename T> struct HasSecondType<T, typename voider<typename T::second_type>::type> : true_type {}; template<typename T, T> struct PointerHelper {}; template<typename T, typename = void> struct HasSomeMemberFunc : false_type {}; template<typename T> struct HasSomeMemberFunc<T, typename voider<PointerHelper<int(T::*)(int), &T::somemember> >::type> : true_type {}; template<typename T, typename = void> struct HasSomeMemberData : false_type {}; template<typename T> struct HasSomeMemberData<T, typename voider<PointerHelper<double T::*, &T::data> >::type> : true_type {}; struct A { int somemember(int); int somemember(double); double data; }; struct B { int data; double otherData; }; template<bool b> class myStaticAssert; template<> class myStaticAssert<true> {}; #define My_Join(A, B) My_Joiner(A, B) #define My_Joiner(A, B) A ## B #define My_StaticAssert(cond, message) \ enum {My_Join(assert, __LINE__) = sizeof(myStaticAssert<cond>)}; My_StaticAssert(HasSomeMemberFunc<A>::value, ""); My_StaticAssert(!HasSomeMemberFunc<B>::value, ""); My_StaticAssert(HasSomeMemberData<A>::value, ""); My_StaticAssert(!HasSomeMemberData<B>::value, ""); I'll leave it as an excercise for you to macro-ize the HasSomeMemberData etc structs. Thanks, Steve.