C++ SFINAE (Substitution Failure Is Not An Error) trailing decltype in function templates
Example
C++11
One of constraining function is to use trailing decltype to specify the return type:
namespace details {
using std::to_string;
// this one is constrained on being able to call to_string(T)
template <class T>
auto convert_to_string(T const& val, int )
-> decltype(to_string(val))
{
return to_string(val);
}
// this one is unconstrained, but less preferred due to the ellipsis argument
template <class T>
std::string convert_to_string(T const& val, ... )
{
std::ostringstream oss;
oss << val;
return oss.str();
}
}
template <class T>
std::string convert_to_string(T const& val)
{
return details::convert_to_string(val, 0);
}
If I call convert_to_string() with an argument with which I can invoke to_string(), then I have two viable functions for details::convert_to_string(). The first is preferred since the conversion from 0 to int is a better implicit conversion sequence than the conversion from 0 to ...
If I call convert_to_string() with an argument from which I cannot invoke to_string(), then the first function template instantiation leads to substitution failure (there is no decltype(to_string(val))). As a result, that candidate is removed from the overload set. The second function template is unconstrained, so it is selected and we instead go through operator<<(std::ostream&, T). If that one is undefined, then we have a hard compile error with a template stack on the line oss << val.
