Question

Suppose I have something like this:

struct EmptyClass{};
template<typename T1, typename T2 = EmptyClass,
         typename T3 = EmptyClass, typename T4 = EmptyClass,
         ..., typename T20> class PoorMansTuple {
  T1 t1;
  T2 t2;
  ...
  T20 t20;
};

Now, I may waste up to 19bytes per PoorMansTuple.

Question is:

1) Is there a way to create a class of size 0?

2) Is there a way to conditionally define a varaible? Somethign like:

  T1 t1;
  if (T2 != EmptyClass) T2 t2; // pseudo code
  if (T3 != EmptyClass) T3 t3; // ...

Thanks!

The use of black magic macros is premitted.

I’m using g++ on MacOSX.

Answer 1

Partial specialization may be what you are looking for the first part of the question. This program

#include <string>
#include <iostream>

struct EmptyClass {};

template<typename T1, typename T2>
class Tuple
{
   T1 t1;
   T2 t2;
};

template<typename T1>
class Tuple <T1, EmptyClass>
{
   T1 t1;
};


int main (void)
{
    Tuple<std::string, std::string> two;
    Tuple<std::string, EmptyClass> one1;
    Tuple<std::string> one2;

    std::cout << "<string, string>: " << sizeof(two) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "<string, empty> : " << sizeof(one1) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "<string>        : " << sizeof(one2) << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

prints

<string, string>: 32
<string, empty> : 16
<string>        : 16