Instantiations and Specializations
To extend your understanding of templates, let’s investigate the terms instantiation and specialization. Keep in mind that including a function template in your code does not in itself generate a function definition. It’s merely a plan for generating a function definition. When the compiler uses the template to generate a function definition for a particular type, the result is termed an instantiation of the template. For example, in Listing 8.13, the function call Swap(i,j)
causes the compiler to generate an instantiation of Swap()
, using int
as the type. The template is not a function definition, but the specific instantiation using int
is a function definition. This type of instantiation is termed implicit ...
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