Question

Say I have the following class:

template<class T>
struct A
{
    static int value;
};

template<class T>
int A<T>::value = 0;

I can specialize A::value on a concrete type without problems:

struct B
{
};

template<>
int A<B>::value = 1;

I’d like to specialize A::value on a template type, I tried the following:

template<class T>
struct C
{
};

// error: template definition of non-template 'int A<C<T> >::value'
template<>
template<class T>
int A<C<T> >::value = 2;

Is there any way to do this or is it only possible to specialize A::value on non-template types?

Answer 1

Instead of introducing a whole explicit specialization, you could just specialize the initialization

template<class T>
struct Value {
  static int const value = 0;
};

template<class T>
struct Value< C<T> > {
  static int const value = 2;
};

template<class T>
int A<T>::value = Value<T>::value;