1.4 KiB
Full Template Specialization
Full template specialization allows you to provide a specific implementation, or behavior, for a template when used with a certain set of type parameters. It is useful when you want to handle special cases or optimize your code for specific types.
Syntax
To create a full specialization of a template, you need to define the specific type for which the specialization should happen. The syntax looks as follows:
template <> //Indicates that this is a specialization
className<specificType> //The specialized class for the specific type
Example
Consider the following example to demonstrate full template specialization:
// Generic template
template <typename T>
class MyContainer {
public:
void print() {
std::cout << "Generic container.\n";
}
};
// Full template specialization for int
template <>
class MyContainer<int> {
public:
void print() {
std::cout << "Container for integers.\n";
}
};
int main() {
MyContainer<double> d;
MyContainer<int> i;
d.print(); // Output: Generic container.
i.print(); // Output: Container for integers.
return 0;
}
In this example, we defined a generic MyContainer template class along with a full specialization for int type. When we use the container with the int type, the specialized implementation's print method is called. For other types, the generic template implementation will be used.