Abstract
Class templates are a powerful mechanism for generating new class types automatically. A significant portion of the C++ Standard Library is built entirely on the ability to define templates. Both function and class templates are used extensively throughout the Library to provide versatile, generic utilities, algorithms, and data structures.
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Notes
- 1.
The actual swap<>() template is different in two aspects. First, it moves the objects if possible using move semantics. You’ll learn all about move semantics in the next chapter. Second, it is only conditionally noexcept. Concretely, it is noexcept if its arguments can be moved without exceptions. Conditional noexcept specifications are a more advanced language feature we do not cover in this book.
- 2.
The reason we cannot use the std::swap() from within our copy assignment operator is that std::swap() in turn would use the copy assignment operator. In other words, calling std::swap() here would result in infinite recursion!
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© 2018 Ivor Horton and Peter Van Weert
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Horton, I., Van Weert, P. (2018). Class Templates. In: Beginning C++17. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3366-5_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3366-5_16
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Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4842-3366-5
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