first off: I have read and I know now that a virtual template member function is not (yet?) possible in C++. A workaround would be to make the class a template and then use the template-argument also in the member-function.
But in the context of OOP, I find that the below example would not be very "natural" if the class was actually a template. Please note that the code is actually not working, but the gcc-4.3.4 reports: error: templates may not be ‘virtual’
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
class Animal {
public:
template< class AMOUNT >
virtual void eat( AMOUNT amount ) const {
std::cout << "I eat like a generic Animal." << std::endl;
}
virtual ~Animal() {
}
};
class Wolf : public Animal {
public:
template< class AMOUNT >
void eat( AMOUNT amount) const {
std::cout << "I eat like a wolf!" << std::endl;
}
virtual ~Wolf() {
}
};
class Fish : public Animal {
public:
template< class AMOUNT >
void eat( AMOUNT amount) const {
std::cout << "I eat like a fish!" << std::endl;
}
virtual ~Fish() {
}
};
class GoldFish : public Fish {
public:
template< class AMOUNT >
void eat( AMOUNT amount) const {
std::cout << "I eat like a goldfish!" << std::endl;
}
virtual ~GoldFish() {
}
};
class OtherAnimal : public Animal {
virtual ~OtherAnimal() {
}
};
int main() {
std::vector<Animal*> animals;
animals.push_back(new Animal());
animals.push_back(new Wolf());
animals.push_back(new Fish());
animals.push_back(new GoldFish());
animals.push_back(new OtherAnimal());
for (std::vector<Animal*>::const_iterator it = animals.begin(); it != animals.end(); ++it) {
(*it)->eat();
delete *it;
}
return 0;
}
So creating a "Fish< Amount > foo" is kind of strange. However, it seems desirable to me to provide an arbitrary amount of food to eat for each animal.
Thus, I am searching a solution about how to achieve something like
Fish bar;
bar.eat( SomeAmount food );
This becomes particularly useful when looking at the for-loop. One might like to feed a specific amount (FoodAmount) to all of the different animals (via eat() and bind1st() e.g.), it could not be done that easily, although I wound find this very inuitive (and thus to some extent "natural). While some might want to argue now that this is due to the "uniform"-character of a vector, I think/wish that it should be possible to achieve this and I really would like to know how, as this is puzzling me for quite some time now...
[EDIT]
To perhaps clarify the motivation behind my question, I want to program an Exporter-class and let different, more specialized classes derive from it. While the top-level Exporter-class is generally only for cosmetic/structural purpose, a GraphExporter-class is derived, that should again serve as a base-class for even more specialzed export. However, similar to the Animal-example, I would like to be able to define GraphExporter* even on specialized/derived classes (e.g. on SpecialGraphExplorer) but when calling "write( out_file )", it should call the appropriate member function for SpecialGraphExporter instead of GraphExporter::write( out_file).
Maybe this makes my situation and intentions clearer.
Best,
Shadow
fish.eat("string")do? What doeswolf.eat(Fish())do? Can you use an abstract base classAmountinstead of trying to make it a template parameter? – HandoffAmountsounds an awful lot like a value, rather than a type, which makes me very confused about why you feel a template is necessary here. – Conversablesize_t. That as well will allow you to pass different values. Or perhaps another example can demonstrate the need better. – Obscurity