December 2005
Beginner
528 pages
14h 13m
English
By now, you have learned about two paradigms that C++ supports. You’ve been using the procedural paradigm when splitting your programs into different functions; then you worked with the object-oriented paradigm, by grouping your code and data into classes and building class hierarchies; in this chapter, you’ll be using another paradigm: generic programming.
Generic programming allows you to create blueprints (or templates) of functions and classes instead of specific functions and classes. These templates can be non-typed: written so that they aren’t restricted to working with specific kinds of data. Then, when the program needs to use one of these functions, the compiler will generate the necessary type-specific version ...