I wonder whether a compile-time for-loop is useful enough so that it would get included in the mpl library; it's very similar to what fold does but it can be used for computations with types other than sequence containers. The loop construct takes a start value, a loop condition and a function calculating the next start value for the next loop recursion and additionally a state together with a binary operation serving as loop body: namespace boost { namespace mpl { template< typename Start, typename UnaryLoopTest, typename BinaryNext , typename State, typename BinaryOp
struct for_: eval_if< // loop as long as the loop condition yields true typename apply< UnaryLoopTest, typename Start::type >::type, // next loop iteration: recursive call for_< // calculate next loop value typename apply< BinaryNext, State, typename Start::type >::type, // pass on UnaryLoopTest and pass on BinaryNext UnaryLoopTest, BinaryNext, // calculate next state typename apply< BinaryOp, State, typename Start::type >::type, // pass on BinaryOp BinaryOp >, // loop termination if loop condition yields false State > {}; } } // That's an example how to use the for-loop: using namespace boost; template<typename T, T N> struct cross_total: mpl::for_< // start mpl::integral_c<T, N>, // loop condition mpl::not_equal_to<mpl::_1, mpl::integral_c<T, 0> >, // calculate next value mpl::divides<mpl::_2, mpl::int_<10> >, // state = current cross sum of already iterated digits mpl::int_<0>, // binary function is loop body: crosstotal += digit mpl::plus< mpl::_1, mpl::modulus<mpl::_2, mpl::int_<10> > > >::type {}; </code> More useful may be to calculate a number's digits for any base, which can be used to calculate the required maximum storage size for a type (I know that there's std::numeric_limits<> but this one would be more general). Klaus Triendl