concept architypes

From: John Maddock (John_Maddock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-03-27 07:00:46

I posted about this before, but got no responce, so lets try again (there
was a posting blizzard going on at the time!).

The class:

  // This is a helper class that provides a way to get a reference to
  // an object.
  template <class T>
  class static_object {
  public:
    static T& get() {
      detail::dummy_constructor d;
      static T x(d);
      return x;
    }
  };

Can only be instantiated for types for which static_object is specialised
as the primary template will never compile (because of the
dummy_constructor).  However as this type is undocumented it seems wrong to
defining specialisations for this (should I be able to specialise
static_object<char> for example?).

Since this code is never run, how about:

  // This is a helper class that provides a way to get a reference to
  // an object.
  template <class T>
  class static_object {
  public:
    static T& get() {
     char d[sizeof(T)];
      return *reinterpret_cast<T*>(d);
    }
  };

- John Maddock
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/john_maddock/