C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

16.1.2. Class Templates

A class template is a blueprint for generating classes. Class templates differ from function templates in that the compiler cannot deduce the template parameter type(s) for a class template. Instead, as we’ve seen many times, to use a class template we must supply additional information inside angle brackets following the template’s name (§ 3.3, p. 97). That extra information is the list of template arguments to use in place of the template parameters.

Defining a Class Template

As an example, we’ll implement a template version of StrBlob (§ 12.1.1, p. 456). We’ll name our template Blob to indicate that it is no longer ...