Re: Templates in C++

Greg Morrisett (jgmorris@cs.cmu.edu) wrote:


|> Furthermore, modern ML implementations, unlike C++, deal with issues
|> of true separate compilation. In particular, they do _not_ require
|> that you suck in your template definitions into each source file that
|> uses the template.


This is not required in C++, at least not in the implementation I'm
familiar with (Sun CC, both the old Cfront version, and the new native
code compiler). In fact, the current draft standard does *not* allow
this to be required.


What currently is required is that the sources for the template
implementation be somewhere accessible, since the implementation *will*
be dragged in at link time; linking a large system for the first time
will frequently be very slow, as all of the templates will be
instantiated and compiled. (People at Sun tell me that this is not the
case with the new compiler. I've yet to link a large application with
it to see.)
--
James Kanze (+33) 88 14 49 00 email: kanze@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, Sarl., 8 rue des Francs Bourgeois, 67000 Strasbourg, France
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