Can you make a C++ generic function?

Question

Is it possible to create a generic C++ function foo?

foo(Object bar, Object fred)
{
    //code
}

in which that if the two objects

Answer 1

Most probably you need to use templates as other people suggest:

template 
return_type func(T const& l, T const& r)
{
   ...
}

Because you normally want compilation to fail when the operation implemented by a generic function does not make sense for particular types, so you would either use conditional definition (in the below example is_arithmetic):

#include 
#include 

template 
typename boost::enable_if, return_type>::type
func(T const& l, T const& r)
{
    ...
}

or static assertion in the code to yield the same result:

#include 

template 
return_type func(T const& l, T const& r)
{
    static_assert(boost::is_arithmetic::type::value, "incompatible types");
    ...
}