Boost C++ Libraries

Recursive Inlined Functions

An interesting peculiarity of functions like at when applied to a Forward Sequence like list is that what could have been linear runtime complexity effectively becomes constant O(1) due to compiler optimization of C++ inlined functions, however deeply recursive (up to a certain compiler limit of course). Compile time complexity remains linear.

Overloaded Functions

Associative sequences use function overloading to implement membership testing and type associated key lookup. This amounts to constant runtime and amortized constant compile time complexities. There is an overloaded function, f(k), for each key type k. The compiler chooses the appropriate function given a key, k.

Tag Dispatching

Tag dispatching is a generic programming technique for selecting template specializations. There are typically 3 components involved in the tag dispatching mechanism:

For example, the fusion result_of::begin metafunction is implemented as follows:

template <typename Sequence>
struct begin
{
    typedef typename
        result_of::begin_impl<typename traits::tag_of<Sequence>::type>::
        template apply<Sequence>::type
    type;
};

In the case:

Extensibility

Unlike MPL, there is no extensibe sequence concept in fusion. This does not mean that Fusion sequences are not extensible. In fact, all Fusion sequences are inherently extensible. It is just that the manner of sequence extension in Fusion is diferent from both STL and MPL on account of the lazy nature of fusion Algorithms. STL containers extend themselves in place though member functions such as push_back and insert. MPL sequences, on the other hand, are extended through "intrinsic" functions that actually return whole sequences. MPL is purely functional and can not have side effects. For example, MPL's push_back does not actually mutate an mpl::vector. It can't do that. Instead, it returns an extended mpl::vector.

Like MPL, Fusion too is purely functional and can not have side effects. With runtime efficiency in mind, Fusion sequences are extended through generic functions that return Views. Views are sequences that do not actually contain data, but instead impart an alternative presentation over the data from one or more underlying sequences. Views are proxies. They provide an efficient yet purely functional way to work on potentially expensive sequence operations. For example, given a vector, Fusion's push_back returns a joint_view, instead of an actual extended vector. A joint_view holds a reference to the original sequence plus the appended data --making it very cheap to pass around.

Element Conversion

Functions that take in elemental values to form sequences (e.g. make_list) convert their arguments to something suitable to be stored as a sequence element. In general, the element types are stored as plain values. Example:

make_list(1, 'x')

returns a list<int, char>.

There are a few exceptions, however.

Arrays:

Array arguments are deduced to reference to const types. For example ^[14] :

make_list("Donald", "Daisy")

creates a list of type

list<const char (&)[7], const char (&)[6]>

Function pointers:

Function pointers are deduced to the plain non-reference type (i.e. to plain function pointer). Example:

void f(int i);
  ...
make_list(&f);

creates a list of type

list<void (*)(int)>

boost::ref

Fusion's generation functions (e.g. make_list) by default stores the element types as plain non-reference types. Example:

void foo(const A& a, B& b) {
    ...
    make_list(a, b)

creates a list of type

list<A, B>

Sometimes the plain non-reference type is not desired. You can use boost::ref and boost::cref to store references or const references (respectively) instead. The mechanism does not compromise const correctness since a const object wrapped with ref results in a tuple element with const reference type (see the fifth code line below). Examples:

For example:

A a; B b; const A ca = a;
make_list(cref(a), b);          // creates list<const A&, B>
make_list(ref(a), b);           // creates list<A&, B>
make_list(ref(a), cref(b));     // creates list<A&, const B&>
make_list(cref(ca));            // creates list<const A&>
make_list(ref(ca));             // creates list<const A&>

See Boost.Ref for details.