Question

I’m studying the DTMF code at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dtmf/. I’ve come across some C++ code that I’m having trouble understanding:

template<int, int, int, int> class Types;
template <> class Types<5, 4, 2, 1>
{
public:
        typedef long int Int40;
        typedef unsigned long int Uint40;
        typedef int Int32;
        typedef unsigned int Uint32;
        typedef short int Int16;
        typedef unsigned short int Uint16;
        typedef char Int8;
        typedef unsigned char Uint8;
};
template <> class Types<8, 4, 2, 1>
{
public:
        typedef long int Int64;
        typedef unsigned long int Uint64;
        typedef int Int32;
        typedef unsigned int Uint32;
        typedef short int Int16;
        typedef unsigned short int Uint16;
        typedef char Int8;
        typedef unsigned char Uint8;
};
template <> class Types<4, 4, 2, 1>
{
public:
        typedef int Int32;
        typedef unsigned int Uint32;
        typedef short int Int16;
        typedef unsigned short int Uint16;
        typedef char Int8;
        typedef unsigned char Uint8;
};

// For 16bit chars
template <> class Types<2, 1, 1, 1>
{
public:
        typedef long int Int32;
        typedef unsigned long int Uint32;
        typedef short int Int16;
        typedef unsigned short int Uint16;
};

typedef Types<sizeof(long int), sizeof(int), sizeof(short int), sizeof(char)>::Int32     INT32;
typedef Types<sizeof(long int), sizeof(int), sizeof(short int), sizeof(char)>::Uint32    UINT32;
typedef Types<sizeof(long int), sizeof(int), sizeof(short int), sizeof(char)>::Int16     INT16;
typedef Types<sizeof(long int), sizeof(int), sizeof(short int), sizeof(char)>::Uint16    UINT16;

From there, they are used just like normal primitive types:

static const INT16 tempCoeff[8];

My gut feeling tells me that all this stuff achieves some sort of cross-platform portability. Am I right, or is there more to it?

Answer 1

It looks like they’re reinventing stdint.h (which I believe isn’t supported in some/many versions of MS compilers) by providing a somewhat portable mechanism for integral types of certain sizes based on calls to sizeof. Note that the fourth template parameter that accepts sizeof(char) is completely useless as sizeof(char) is always 1.