Priority when choosing overloaded template functions in C++

Question

I have the following problem:

class Base
{
};

class Derived : public Base
{
};

class Different
{
};

class X
{
public:
  template 
  stat         


        

Answer 1

If you are using boost, you can do it with some template metaprogramming:

#include 

class X
{
private:
    template 
    static const char *generic_func(T *data)
    {
        // Do something generic...
        return "Generic";
    }

    template 
    static const char *base_func(T *data)
    {
        // Do something specific...
        return "Specific";
    }

public:
    template 
    static const char* func(T* data)
    {
        if (boost::is_base_of::value)
            return base_func(data);

        return generic_func(data);
    }
};

The is_base_of metafunction is evaluated at compile time and the optimizer will most probably remove the dead branch of the if in the func function. This approach allows you to have more than one specific case.