Templates Tutorials

Modern C++ Design - *the* book on generic programming...truly revolutionary
C++ Templates - the nitty-gritty details of the template system
Imperfect C++ - useful applications of templates

As for Internet tutorials, I don't know of many.

Thanks a lot man, I'll definately be looking into buying those books. I think I need something to spice up my programming, its been lacking ever since these beginner's introduction classes I'm taking at community college. I think I'm going to die learning how to "properly use an if statement."

Halfway through the semester and we haven't even touched loops yet. Ugh.

The first two books are pretty hardcore. And by hardcore I mean it took about a year to really grasp what was going on in MC++D. If you enjoy a challenge, I recommend it. The third book is a lot more practical and easier reading at times.

I made a post in beginners a little while back which centered around the STL and templates. It was fairly lengthy, and had many good comments:

Here

Not sure if it goes into enough detail for you, but Thinking in C++ has a chapter on templates. It's free to download, just do a search.

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Original post by aaroncox1234 Not sure if it goes into enough detail for you, but Thinking in C++ has a chapter on templates. It's free to download, just do a search.

thinking in c++ vol. 2 discusses templates and more.

I definately enjoy challenges; I'm going to pick that book up. Thanks for everyone's input!

Another great way to learn is to take apart a random boost library and figure out how it works. It will blow your mind.

Angelika Langer's website has lots of good articles including this one on Expression Templates.

Also Todd Veldhuizen's Template Metaprograms and ExpressionTemplates.

Also this article about using the boost metaprogramming library to create a dimensional analysis library for checking, at compile time, to make sure that for example, a variable representing acceleration really is made up of a distance variable divided twice by time variables.

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Original post by nuvem Another great way to learn is to take apart a random boost library and figure out how it works. It will blow your mind.

That was actually one of my plans, I haven't gotten around to it yet though.

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Original post by antareus Modern C++ Design - *the* book on generic programming...truly revolutionary C++ Templates - the nitty-gritty details of the template system Imperfect C++ - useful applications of templates As for Internet tutorials, I don't know of many.

See sample chapters for MC++D Ch 1: Policy based design Ch 7: Smart pointers

C++ Templates sample chapters

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Original post by petewood Also this article about using the boost metaprogramming library to create a dimensional analysis library for checking, at compile time, to make sure that for example, a variable representing acceleration really is made up of a distance variable divided twice by time variables.

That comes from Abrahams' and Gurtovoy's "C++ Template Metaprogramming" (aka "The MPL Book"), which is an excellent book I can't recommend enough. I suggest reading "Modern C++ Design" first to get an idea of what the MPL book is all about, which is formalizing the ideas presented in "Modern C++ Design".

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Original post by nuvem Another great way to learn is to take apart a random boost library and figure out how it works. It will blow your mind.

Especially Spirit. Spirit is the holy grail of template metaprogramming.

However, I find that much of boost is obscured the preprocessor code (cf. the Boost.Preprocessor library) that is required to overcome limitations of the template engine. Learning the PP library is pretty much a prereq to understanding boost code.

The combined power of Boost.MPL and Boost.PP is nothing short of amazing (although I'm sure Lispies are laughing at us...)