Question

Today I came to know that C++ allows non-type template parameters of type std::nullptr_t:

template<std::nullptr_t N> struct A { };

template<std::nullptr_t N> void f() { } 

For the life of me, I cannot come up with any sensible use-case for these. Can anyone please come up with a rationale for this?

Answer 1

It seems this is allowed to avoid the need to special case template using a pointer type and a value for std::nullptr_t. That, the use case would look look something like this:

template <typename T, T Ptr>
struct pointer_object {
    static T get_pointer() { return Ptr; }
};

int int_ptr(0);

typedef pointer_object<int*, &int_ptr> int_ptr_t;
typedef pointer_object<std::nullptr_t, nullptr> null_ptr_t;

That is, pointer values can be template arguments and, thus, nullptr should be, too.