Strong-Types

This is an extremely simple, single-header implementation of strong typedefs in C++. While several good strong typedef libraries for C++ exist, most of them are complex, making use of a large amount of template metaprogramming to allow levels of customization that are not necessary for many cases.

This library attempts to offer the core functionality of strong typedefs (creating typedef-like types that rename an existing type but are treated as distinct types by the compiler) with as little boilerplate as possible. Here is some sample code demonstrating the some of the basic features:

#include <iostream>
#include "strong-types.hpp"

struct Width : strong_type<unsigned int, Width> {}
struct Height : strong_type<unsigned int, Height> {}

int main()
{
    Width w{4};
    Height h{5};
    h = w; // Compile-time error
    h += 5;
    w *= 9;
    Height h2{6};
    h = h + h2; // Works
    std::cout << h << std::endl; // Works as expected
    std::cout << w << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

Features

• Simple creation of typedefs; simply create a struct inheriting from strong_type<A, B>, where A is the type you want to typedef and B is the type name of the typedef
• Templated operator overloads, including most arithmetic, comparison, and increment/ decrementing operators, as well as an output stream operator. Adding your own operators is trivial
• To access members/member functions of the underlying type, simply access the 'v' member. If you don't want to see the 'v' member, then simply use private inheritance.

See example.cpp and the files in the tests directory for more examples of usage.

This blog post by Vincent Zalzal was the inspiration for this simple method of creating strong typedefs.