Partial template specialization for functions in C++

Partial template specialization for functions in C++

The short of it is you can't do it. But you can do something that looks just like it.

What is template specialization?

For functions template specialization looks like this:


So the first template tells us what to do in general and the specialization tells us what to do in particular cases.

What is partial template specialization?

Its just like template specialization, but you're not specifying all the template parameters. So for the example above we might like to add a specialization that prints "Lucky 7" when the first template argument is 7. If we could write it, it would look like this (but its not valid C++)



However this doesn't work - it's not valid C++.

What is the issue?

C++ does not allow function partial specialization.

How do we get around it?

C++ does allow partial template specialization for classes (and structs). So our solution is just to defer to a templated helper class with static functions:



Its verbose, but it works.

NOTE: in this case we're working with `int` parameters that would be better done with a normal function containing a couple of `if` statements - however all this works for type templates too.