partial specialization of function template

Question

Can anybody explain why partial specialization is not valid for function template but it's fine for class template.

I understand partial specialization might make the compiler get confused with function overloading, but I still need more information to make me totally understand. Can anybody offer me some neat examples?

This has been covered quite well already: http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=function+partial+specialization and http://www.google.com/search?q=function+template+partial+specialization provide abundant resources. — Potatoswatter, Feb 07 '10 at 01:30

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 07 '10 at 00:51

Getting confused is enough of a reason, in this case.

And there's an existing alternative solution: overloading. The committee spent a lot of effort (it seems to me, I wasn't there) getting function overload resolution working for templates, and surely part of the reason for that included not having to solve the less-general, hard problem of function template partial specialization.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 29 '13 at 01:10

0

Now, I'm not an expert but I think the answer to the first part is that partial function specialisation would conflict (and be partially redundant) with function overloading. As for the second part, you can use a template struct that serves as a container for the thing you want to partially specialise.

edited Mar 29 '13 at 01:10

Andrew Barber

39,603
20
94
123

answered Mar 28 '13 at 22:43

Anonymous Coward

9
1

partial specialization of function template

2 Answers2

Linked

Related