Chapter 13
Names in Templates
Names are a fundamental concept in most programming languages. They are the means by which a programmer can refer to previously constructed entities. When a C++ compiler encounters a name, it must “look it up” to identify the entity being referred. From an implementer’s point of view, C++ is a hard language in this respect. Consider the C++ statement x*y;. If x and y are the names of variables, this statement is a multiplication, but if x is the name of a type, then the statement declares y as a pointer to an entity of type x.
This small example demonstrates that C++ (like C) is a context-sensitive language: A construct cannot always be understood without knowing its wider context. How does this relate to templates? ...
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