====== 2011.04.08 - template overloading for array types ======

yesterday Mariusz, a friend from my [[http://www.wcss.wroc.pl|current work]], showed me a short article describing interesting feature of [[wp>C++]] -- template overloading for array types. it's very nice thing, since you can easily tell smart pointer if argument it takes is a pointer to some object or array of objects (i.e. "new X" or "new X[10]", that both are pointer to by "X*"). for example consider the following code:

<code c++>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

template<typename T>
struct Test
{
  static void f(void)
  {
    cout<<"Test<T>"<<endl;
  }
};

template<typename T>
struct Test<T[]>
{
  static void f(void)
  {
    cout<<"Test<T[]>"<<endl;
  }
};

int main(void)
{
  Test<int*>::f();
  Test<int[]>::f();
  return 0;
}
</code>

output on the screen is be:

  Test<T>
  Test<T[]>

another interesting fact is that it is actually used in [[wp>C++0x]] standard library implementation of std::unique_ptr<>, to use "delete" for object pointers and "delete[]" for array-of-objects pointers.