on Sun Aug 12 2007, "John Maddock" <john-AT-johnmaddock.co.uk> wrote:
As others have said already - template meta-programming is a different beast altogether - it generates neither code nor data
Much as I hate to disagree with John (especially since I agree with the bulk of his post), that statement has been made twice in this thread and it's not quite correct. I know what the posters mean: computation with types and compile-time constants does not in and of itself generate any code or data. I can take a program, add massive template meta-computations that slow compilation by hours, and not change the resulting executable image one bit. But of course, that's pretty useless and uninteresting. The whole point of metaprogramming is to change the executable image programmatically, so code and data generation most certainly *is* something one does with metaprograms (in C++, that would be e.g. by instantiating function templates). Code generationi with metaprograms is (or should be) done very intentionally, so you're generating exactly the code you want. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting http://www.boost-consulting.com The Astoria Seminar ==> http://www.astoriaseminar.com