11–20 of 214 posts
Finally. I think there have been proposals since C++17 at least, and all I really wanted is for them to solve the common problem of basic static reflection for enums (without hacks like magic_enum uses).
Note that there are links pointing to examples on Compiler Explorer, using the EDG and clang preview implementations.
I do like the examples that I see there.
This seems like the kind of language feature that I might not make much use of directly in general application code, but would wrap up in utility functions or use via lower-level libraries that the application code builds on. E.g., they showed command-line parsing, but I could also see this for benchmarking and testing frameworks to automatically find the workloads and tests in a non-hacky way.
I also wonder about how this feature interacts with translation units or modules and linkage, though. I'm reminded of the static initialization order fiasco; this seems like it might open up issues that make that look tame by comparison. (Not a complaint; I'm actually looking forward to this.)
* What type of problems static reflection could solve, in general?
* Are there specific cases and / or situations where static reflection could resolve such case, even simplify an unnecessary complexity?Compile time or runtime? Compile time reflection would be completely painless and bloat-free.
RTTI is a super vital feature for deserializing without having to generate code or write a ton of tedious boilerplate. I'd be very happy with RTTI in C++ and my life would be instantly easier if there were RTTI in typescript so I didn't have to use any of the hacky solutions out there for deserializing JSON on backends without RTTI. I suppose C++'s template system might be able to generate JSON deserializers with sta…
It definitely can, and it will be faster and more type-safe than doing it at runtime. But if you do want to do it at runtime, well, it's possible to implement runtime reflection as a library on top of compile-time reflection, so someone will probably do that.
Can I ask a naive question that consists of two parts and please don't flame me? lol * What type of problems static reflection could solve, in general? * Are there specific cases and / or situations where static reflection could resolve such case, even simplify an unnecessary complexity?
Can I ask a naive question that consists of two parts and please don't flame me? lol * What type of problems static reflection could solve, in general? * Are there specific cases and / or situations where static reflection could resolve such case, even simplify an unnecessary complexity?
Imagine making a plain
struct Point { float x; float y; };
Can I ask a naive question that consists of two parts and please don't flame me? lol * What type of problems static reflection could solve, in general? * Are there specific cases and / or situations where static reflection could resolve such case, even simplify an unnecessary complexity?
Does static reflection simplify such cases? ... Outlook unclear. It's definitely gnarlier to actually write the serialize() method, and in many cases, it does feel like a better option is to write a specific domain-specific language to specify what you want to specify, with a tool to operate on it as appropriate (think something like protobufs for serialization).
Compile time or runtime? Compile time reflection would be completely painless and bloat-free.