The C++ Type Loophole (C++14)

Recently I was doing some work on retrieving struct data member types. And as I was exploring, researching and testing ideas I uncovered this pearl:

template<int N> struct tag{};

template<typename T, int N>
struct loophole_t {
  friend auto loophole(tag<N>) { return T{}; };
};

auto loophole(tag<0>);

sizeof( loophole_t<std::string, 0> );

===> std::is_same< std::string, decltype( loophole(tag<0>{}) ) >::value; <===

What is the result you think? TRUE! Check it here at godbolt.org.

Interesting. I had so much pain creating struct reader to detect data member types of a struct. And it was painfully limited: only literal types, pre-built type list, etc. With this anything becomes possible.

After some compiler-fight I came up with an elegant ten lines of code header that can create a type list from a data structure (with certain limitations) with just C++, no fixed type lists. Here is a short example of what it can do:

using wndclass_tlist = loophole_ns::as_type_list< WNDCLASS >;

Resulting type list (Visual Studio 2017):

  0. unsigned int
  1. __int64 (__cdecl*)(struct HWND__ * __ptr64,unsigned int,unsigned __int64,__int64)
  2. int
  3. int
  4. struct HINSTANCE__ * __ptr64
  5. struct HICON__ * __ptr64
  6. struct HICON__ * __ptr64
  7. struct HBRUSH__ * __ptr64
  8. wchar_t const * __ptr64
  9. wchar_t const * __ptr64

Isn't it awesome!?

This type loophole basically allows us to store some type into a "variable" and later read it back! It's very powerful.

More examples: we can turn a structure into luple: a lightweight tuple of my design that has the advantage of a stable layout across compilers (at least as far as I tested it):

struct data {
  float a;
  std::string b;
};

using data_tlist = loophole_ns::as_type_list< data >;
using data_luple = luple< data_tlist >;

data d{ 1.f, "Hello World!" };

auto& l = reinterpret_cast< wndclass_luple& >( d ); //I know what you feel)

get< std::string >(l) = "Welcome, New World!"

luple_do( l, []( auto& value ) { std::cout << value << "\n"; } );

If you want to know more about how it works and its limitations then check out the code. I provide full commented source code of both the type loophole and luple in the GitHub repo. It works on all three major compilers.

You can see it in action online at tio.run, Coliru, Wandbox.

You can find a more condensed example of a data member type detector using type loophole here at godbolt.org (a slightly other version was initially provided by a user named jguegant at Reddit).

Sasha Sobol has come up with an example (online at Coliru) that makes it possible to assign unique IDs to types during compile time (it's instantiation order dependent).

If you're not comfortable with reading the source code then some nice guy (render787) on Reddit made a detailed comment that gives a good observation of how this loophole allows the struct data member type information to be acquired.

I have not so far examined if that's in violation of the Standard. So, C++ Standard gurus are really welcome. The first to respond at Twitter was Simon Brand who pointed to a defect report 2118.

Follow me on Twitter for updates about my new articles (mostly programming and computer graphics).

Finally, some love to our C++ heroes:

I should've generated a meme for every other C++ leader out there like Scott Meyers, Stephan T. Lavavej, Alisdair Meredith, Howard Hinnant and basically everyone on the committee and others who contribute to the C++.