Question

After it turned out that what I originally wanted is probably not possible w/o involving C++11 I want to slightly change the requirement and ask you if this can be achieved.

previous question

Basically I want to check in compile time if a class is inheriting from “interface”. By interface I mean class with pure virtual methods only.
I would like to do the following code:

template <typename T>
class Impl : public T {
public:
STATIC_ASSERT_INTERFACE(T);
};

The behavior here is if T has only pure virtual methods then it will compile and if one of its methods is not then fail.

Can anyone think of something like that?

Answer 1

This is basically similar to Java interfaces. In C++, there is no existence of interface as such, it’s just a terminology used for a class with all pure-virtual methods and only static const data members.

Additionally, pure virtual methods may or may not have a function body. Thus C++ pure virtual methods are not exactly same as Java’s abstract methods.

Unfortunately what you are asking is not possible to simulate in C++.