Is Template Metaprogramming faster than the equivalent C code ?
First, a disclaimer: What I think you’re asking about is not just template metaprogramming, but also generic programming. The two concepts are closely related, and there’s no exact definition of what each encompasses. But in short, template metaprogramming is essentially writing a program using templates, which is evaluated at compile-time. (which makes it entirely free at runtime. Nothing happens. The value (or more commonly, type) has already been computed by the compiler, and is available as a constant (either a const variable, or an enum), or as a typedef nested in a class (if you’ve used it to “compute” a type). Generic programming is using templates and when necessary, template metaprogramming, to create generic code which works the same (and with no loss in performance), with all and any type. I’m going to use examples of both in the following. A common use for template metaprogramming is to enable types to be used in generic programming, even if they were not designed for it. S
