C++ Common Knowledge: Essential Intermediate Programming

Item 57. Template Argument Deduction

Class templates must be specialized explicitly. For example, if we want to specialize the Heap container discussed in Class Template Explicit Specialization [46, 155], we have to provide a type name argument to the template:

Heap<int> aHeap;Heap<const char *> anotherHeap;

Function templates may also be specialized explicitly. Suppose we have a function template that performs a restricted old-style cast:

We may specialize the template explicitly when we call it, just as we must specialize a class template:

int a = cast<int,double>(12.3);

However, it’s typical and more convenient to let the compiler deduce ...