How to create a type trait to avoid writing redundant specializations

June 14, 2023

I have a class template with a primary template that is meant to work with any type argument T. However, due to some particular needs, I need to use template specialization like this:

template<typename T>
class foo {
private:
    T result;
public:
    void modify_result(T a) {
        result = some_operations(a);
    }
};

template<>
class foo<uint64_t> {
private:
    uint64_t result;
public:
    // notice: uint32_t not the same as our template argument
    void modify_result(uint32_t a) {
        result = some_operations(a);
    }
};

The problem is that I have to create a large number of full specializations for each of my particular cases. If I ever want to modify or add something to the class, I will have to do it for every specialization, which is really bad for maintainability.

I would like to have some sort of type trait that checks the type of T. If T is of a certain type e.g. uint64_t, then we know that the input of the method or certain variables inside the method need to be of type uint32_t. This would enable me to customize my template without having additional maintenance costs.

>Solution :

You can define a type trait, and add specialization for each particular type, like:

template <typename T>
struct parameter_type {
    using type = T;
};

template <>
struct parameter_type<uint64_t> {
    using type = uint32_t;
};

Then use it as:

template<typename T>
class foo {
private:
    T result;
public:
    void modify_result(typename parameter_type<T>::type a) {
        result = some_operations(a);
    }
};