C++ Templates: The Complete Guide, 2nd Edition

Appendix D

Standard Type Utilities

The C++ standard library largely consists of templates, many of which rely on various techniques introduced and discussed in this book. For this reason, a couple of techniques were “standardized” in the sense that the standard library defines several templates to implement libraries with generic code. These type utilities (type traits and other helpers) are listed and explained here in this chapter.

Note that some type traits need compiler support, while others can just be implemented in the library using existing in-language features (we discuss some of them in Chapter 19).

D.1 Using Type Traits

When using type traits, in general you have to include the header file <type_traits>:

#include <type_traits>

Then ...