MultiMethods Implementation via Deferred Dispatching

• Download demo project - 8.09 Kb

Introduction

Here you can find a solution to a well known problem of multimethods. It will be demonstrated using famous "crossing shapes example".

The main merits of the proposed solution are:

1. no use of type casts of any kind (dynamic, static, reinterpret, const or C-style);
2. no use of RTTI;
3. no use of preprocessor;
4. strong type safety;
5. constant time of multimethod execution;
6. no dynamic memory allocation (via new or malloc) is performed during multimethod call;
7. compiler doing all the work;
8. use of only standard C++ features.

Background

This approach makes it possible for user to write quite readable code. Suppose, we have the following hierarchy of shapes:

         ---- Shape_ ------
         |      |         |
      Circle_  Rect_  Triangle_
                |
              Square_ 

Then user can write code like this:

     Shape_* circle = new Circle_( Point_( 5, 5 ), 3 );
     Shape_* rect = new Rect_( Point_( 5, 5 ), Point_( 10, 10 ) );
     bool cross1 = circle->Cross( rect );
     bool cross2 = rect->Cross( circle );

Multimethod is called in following form:

     (arg0)->Cross( arg1 )

User is responsible for providing implementation of crossing detection code for situations where types TArg0 and TArg1 are known. Implementations are provided in the form of template class specialization. For example:

     template <>
     struct Crossing_< Circle_, Rect_ >
     {
     //implementation
     };

One can provide some (or all) of the following:

• fully specialized versions of Crossing_ (circles against rectangles, for example),
• symmetric versions of Crossing_ (rectangles against circles via circles against rectangles crossing, for example),
• hierarchy depended versions (crossing of two rectangular shapes, for example),
• fully specialized homogeneous versions (crossing of two circles, for example),
• etc.

Usage

The details are provided in the form of well-commented code in demo project (in file mmvdd_initial.cpp).

Dependencies:

• standard compliant C++ compiler,
• boost-1.30.2.

Improvements

Deferred dispatcher generation

Someone thinks that manual writing of dispatcher is awkward. But we can generate a dispatcher from repository typelist, that contains types of all used concrete shapes.

Improvement advantages:

• Suppose there is two libraries of shapes and types provided by them are joined in two typelists: Shapes0 and Shapes1. One can merge this typelists and use this libraries together.
• Typelists provided by libraries can be easily modified. One can add or remove some shapes.

Improvement disadvantages:

• Compilation time may grows.
• Number of shape types is limited by standard (by template recursion limitation).

The details of this improvement are provided in the form of well-commented code in demo project (in file mmvdd_generated.cpp).

References

1. www.boost.org
2. Andrei Alexanderscu "Modern C++ Design"
3. David Vandevoorde, Nicolai M. Josuttis "C++ Templates: The Complete Guide"
4. Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software"

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