From Mechanism to Method: Function Follows Form
By Kelvin Henney, November 01, 2000
Of all the features of C++ that can affect source code readability, operator overloading is one of the most powerful. Operator overloading can render otherwise well-written code obscure; on the other hand, it makes possible many important idioms - smart pointers, function objects, and iterators, to name a few. Kevlin Henney shows us another good application of operator overloading: a remember_function that bundles a target object together with a member function pointer for later callback
November 2000 C++ Experts Forum/From Mechanism to Method/Listing 1
template<typename target_ptr_type, typename member_ptr_type>
class remember_function
{
public:
remember_function(target_ptr_type on, member_ptr_type call)
: ptr(on), member(call)
{
}
void operator()() const
{
(ptr->*member)();
}
private:
target_ptr_type ptr;
member_ptr_type member;
};
template<typename target_ptr_type, typename member_ptr_type>
remember_function<target_ptr_type, member_ptr_type>
remember(target_ptr_type on, member_ptr_type call)
{
return remember_function<
target_ptr_type, member_ptr_type>(on, call);
}
