This directory contains a set of lessons aimed at teaching meta-programming in C++, as well as Fatal.They gradually introduce idioms to better use Fatal when writing software.
Lessons source code is self-contained, presenting a full textual explanation of the lesson itself. The output of the lessons is also self-contained, presenting the full textual explanation and source code. This means that lessons can be followed by reading the source code, the lesson's output, or both.
At this point only a few lessons are available. Stay tuned for updates.
Fundamentals of meta-programming:
- Variadics
- Higher-order metafunctions
- SFINAE
- Compile-time assertions
- Compile-time lists
- Compile-time strings
- Compile-time prefix trees and efficient string matching
- Examples of how to use metaprogramming for real world applications
These lessons can be tried online using Metashell.
Metashell allows you to easily inspect the type of an alias. Whenever you encounter TYPE(T) in a lesson, you can simply type T instead to print the type represented by it:
> using type = std::integral_constant<std::size_t, 42>;
> type
std::integral_constant<std::size_t, 42>
Here's an example of how to follow a lesson in Metashell (use a trailing backslash \ for multi-line statements):
> #include <fatal/lesson/lesson.h>
> template <typename T, T... Values> \
...> struct sequence {};
> using mp = sequence<unsigned, 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287>;
> mp
sequence<unsigned, 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287>
Due to its REPL nature, Metashell provides a much more dynamic environment than the text editor + compiler combo, highly recommended for learning.
A compliant C++11 compiler. Currently tested under Clang {3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8} and GCC {4.8.5+, 4.9, 5}.
There are no other external dependencies.
$ clang++ -std=c++11 -I path/to/fatal \
-o path/to/output/binary lesson/lesson_filename.cppor
$ g++ -std=c++11 -I path/to/fatal \
-o path/to/output/binary lesson/lesson_filename.cpp