C++ In a Nutshell

Specialization

A template declares a set of functions or classes from a single declaration, which is a powerful tool for writing code once and having it work in a multitude of situations. A single, one-size-fits-all approach is not always appropriate, however. You can therefore specialize a template for specific values of one or more template arguments and provide a completely different definition for that special case.

You can specialize a class template, a function template, or a member of a class template. Declare a specialization with an empty set of template parameters in the template header followed by a declaration that provides arguments for all the template parameters:

template<>declaration

Specializations must appear after the declaration of the primary template, and they must be declared in the same namespace as the primary template. You can also have a partial specialization, which provides some of the template arguments. (See the next section, Section 7.6.)

When a template is instantiated, if the template arguments of the instantiation match the arguments used in a specialization, the compiler instantiates the matching specialization. Otherwise, it instantiates the primary template. See Section 7.7 later in this chapter for details.

To specialize a function template, the function return type and parameter types must match the primary template declaration. The function name can be followed by the specialized template arguments (enclosed in angle brackets and separated by ...