If I want to specialise just one method in a template, how do I do it?

Question

Say I have a templated class like

template  struct Node
{
    // general method split
    void split()
    {
        // ... actual code her         


        

Answer 1

You can provide a specialization for only that function outside the class declaration.

template  struct Node
{
    // general method split
    void split()
    {
        // implementation here or somewhere else in header
    }
};

// prototype of function declared in cpp void splitIntNode( Node & node );

template <>
void Node::split()
{
     splitIntNode( this ); // which can be implemented
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
   Node  x;
   x.split(); //will call original method
   Node  k;
   k.split(); //will call the method for the int version
}

If splitIntNode needs access to private members, you can just pass those members into the function rather than the whole Node.