Subject: Re: [boost] Any interest in dynamic dispatching mechanism from " interface" to template functions ?
From: Larry Evans (cppljevans_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-01 21:48:44
On 07/01/10 20:30, Larry Evans wrote:
> On 07/01/10 17:48, Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > The fact is that the Functor itself is not always
> > directly callable with the Args, and there is two
> > sequences of Args that should be considered: the one
> > for the interface and the other for the arguments of
> > the template function. So the
> > level of indirection induced by the convertors
> > mentioned earlier should be considered.
> > For instance a base class pointer to a derived class
> > reference (again... :) ). All these logics are
> > embedded in the convertors, defined for each
> > pair of types (interface, concrete), which make it
> > very easy to extend to new types.
> >
>
> Ah! This is was I was missing. IOW, dispatch_object must know the
> signature ( argument types) of 2 functions, the interface function and
> the template function and attempt conversions between corresponding
> argument types. In contrast, reify_apply simply converts each
> "abstract" argument to it's actual "concrete" value before 1st
> checking that the concrete values are consistent (using
> apply_ftor_check_args) with the Functor. IOW, there's just one
> function (or Functor) in reify_apply's case, and that's not examined
> until all conversions are done because only a runtime value of the
> abstract objects(the tag value in case of the reifier_switch and the
> virtual function table in the case of reifier_visitor) are used to
> convert to the concrete objects; whereas, with dispatch_object, 2
> functions are used and the signatures of both are used to guide the
> conversion.
>
[snip]
This sounds something like functor in category theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functor
What you have is 2 functions:
f_i the interface function
f_t the template function
and you want someway to convert a call to the f_i to f_t.
So, given:
t_i0 f_i(t_i1, t_i2, ..., t_in)
and:
t_t0 f_t(t_t1, t_t2, ..., t_tn)
you want a set of conversion functions:
t_tj c_j(t_ij)
so that you can call:
t_t0 f_t(c_1(t_i1), c_2(t_i2), ... c_n(t_in) )
or something like that, right?
-regards,
Larry