Re: [boost] Any interest in dynamic dispatching mechanism from " interface" to template functions ?

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