On 10/4/05, Asger Mangaard <tmb@tmbproductions.com> wrote:
The pimpl idiom hides the implementation of a given class/struct and all including members from your hpp file. This decreases the compile times greatly. It then relies on the actual implementation to be inside the cpp file. Just like in the 'testsuite' example that's included with the zip file.
My understanding is that the class that holds the pimpl (lets call it the Interface class) generally provides forwarding methods that invoke methods on an Implementation class (the class pointed to by m_pImpl). From what I can see of your implementation, if a user wants to invoke Implementation::foo, they will need to include Implementation.h, which effectively negates the benefit of pimpl in the first place. I'd call what you've provided a "Pimpl *Holder*", and not a Generic Pimpl (which I don't think can be implemented anyway). -- Caleb Epstein caleb dot epstein at gmail dot com