Question

I have the following problem:

template<class T>
void set(std::string path, const T data)
{
   stringstream ss;
   ss << data << std::endl;
   write(path, ss.str();
}

template<class T>
void set(std::string path, const T data)
{
    std::stringstream ss;
    for(typename T::const_iterator it = data.begin(); it < data.end(); ++it)
    {
       ss << *it;
       if(it < data.end() -1 )
          ss << ", ";
    }
    ss << std::endl;
    write(path, ss.str());
}

I get the following error:

error: ‘template<class T> void myclass::set(std::string, T)’ cannot be overloaded
error: with ‘template<class T> void myclass::set(std::string, T)’

Is there a way to differentiate between container types and other types in templates?

Answer 1

In C++03 you can do this with a little bit of SFINAE to selectively enable different versions of the function for different types:

#include <boost/type_traits.hpp>
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

template<class T>
void set(typename boost::enable_if<boost::is_pod<T>, std::string>::type path, const T data)
{
   std::cout << "POD" << std::endl;
   stringstream ss;
   ss << data << std::endl;
}

template<class T>
void set(typename boost::disable_if<boost::is_pod<T>, std::string>::type path, const T data)
{
    std::cout << "Non-POD" << std::endl;
    std::stringstream ss;
    for(typename T::const_iterator it = data.begin(); it < data.end(); ++it)
    {
       ss << *it;
       if(it < data.end() -1 )
          ss << ", ";
    }
    ss << std::endl;
}

int main() {
  int i;
  float f;
  std::vector<int> v;
  set("", v);
  set("", i);
  set("", f);
}

I used boost for convenience here, but you could roll your own if boost isn’t an option or use C++11 instead.

is_pod isn’t quite what you want really, you probably want an is_container trait, but that’s not so trivial, you’ll need to make a trait of your own and is_pod makes a good approximation for how to use traits to selectively enable functions as simple answer.