Point-Free Templates

Description

Template metaprogramming is similar to many functional languages; it's pure with immutable variables. This encourages a similar programming style; which begs the question: what functional features can be leveraged to make template metaprogramming more powerful? Currying is just such a technique, with increasing use cases. For example the ability to make concise point-free metafunctions using partially applied combinators and higher-order functions. Such point-free template metafunctions can be leveraged as a stand-in for the lack of type-level lambda abstractions in C++. Currently there exist tools for converting pointful functions to point-free functions in certain functional languages. These can be used for quickly creating point-free variations of a metafunction or finding reusable patterns. As part of our research we have made a point-free template conversion tool using Clang LibTooling that takes pointful metafunctions and converts them to point-free metafunctions that can be used in lieu of type-level lambdas.

Period	17 Apr 2018
Event title	2018 European LLVM Developers Meeting
Event type	Conference
Location	Bristol, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National