C++ in Embedded Systems

8

Building Generic and Reusable Code with Templates

We have used class templates in previous examples in this book without explaining them in detail. You should by now have a basic understanding of templates in C++ and know how to use template container classes from the standard library to specialize containers with different underlying types. We have also covered the std::optional and std::expected template classes, which we can use to handle different return types from functions.

As you have already seen, templates are used heavily in the C++ standard library. They allow us to implement the same functionality for different types, making our code reusable and generic, which is one of the strengths of C++. Templates are an extremely complex ...