Chapter 1. Boost.TypeIndex 1.0

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

Table of Contents

Motivation

Getting started

Examples

Boost.TypeIndex Header Reference

Header <boost/type_index.hpp>

Performance

Compiler support

Motivation

Sometimes getting and storing information about a template type at runtime is required. For such cases a construction like &typeid(T) or C++11 class std::type_index is usually used. And that is the point, where problems start:

typeid(T) and std::type_index require Run Time Type Info (RTTI)
some implementations of typeid(T) strip const, volatile and references from type, while others don't
some compilers have bugs and do not correctly compare std::type_info objects across shared libraries
only a few implementations already provide std::type_index
no easy way to store type info without stripping const, volatile and references
no nice and portable way to get human readable type names

Boost.TypeIndex was designed to work around those issues.

	Note
	`T` means type here. Think of it as of `T` in `template <class T>`

	Warning
	This library is not accepted to Boost, it is currrently waiting for review.