Chapter 13. Future Directions

C++ templates evolved considerably from their initial design in 1988 until the standardization of C++ in 1998 (the technical work was completed in November 1997). After that, the language definition was stable for several years, but during that time various new needs have arisen in the area of C++ templates. Some of these needs are simply a consequence of a desire for more consistency or orthogonality in the language. For example, why wouldn’t default template arguments be allowed on function templates when they are allowed on class templates? Other extensions are prompted by increasingly sophisticated template programming idioms that often stretch the abilities of existing compilers.

In what follows we describe ...

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