THINK++ — Engineering Visualized

Generic Classes

Class Templates

Enables a class to handle different data types. Most STL containers like vector and stack are implemented as class templates.

THE GENERIC BOX

template <class T>
class Box {
    T data;
public:
    Box(T d) : data(d) {}
    T getData() { return data; }
};

Box<int> intBox(10);
Box<string> strBox("Hello");

TYPE SAFETY

Ensures that you only perform valid operations for the specific type T.

CODE REUSE

Write the data structure logic once; use it for any data type.

CLASS TEMPLATE SPECIALIZATION

You can define a special version of the template for a specific type (like bool) to optimize its behavior.

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