Templates in FPL?

[D. Tweed]

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Fergus Henderson wrote:

> > > I'm not sure what you mean by type-checked here.  Templates are not
> > > type-checked at definition time, but are type-checked when they are
> > > used; the same is true of ordinary macros.
> > 
> > I was thinking in terms of (to take a really simple example)
> > 
> > template<class T>
> > void
> > initialiseArray(T** arr,const T& elt,int bnd)
> ...
> > If I try and use intialiseArray(<obj of type foo>,<obj of type bar>), with
> > the template function I get the error when passing in the parameters;
> 
> In other words, *calls to* template functions are type-checked at compile time.
> However, *definitions of* template functions are only type-checked when they
> are instantiated.

Umm... the point I was trying to make (in an inept way) was that the
type-check error messages that you get are in the context of the original
function that you physically wrote; whereas in the macro version
rather the error is in terms of the munged source code, which can make
abstracting it to the `original erroneous source line' difficult.

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