Toward foundations for type-reflective metaprogramming

Abstract

C++ template metaprogramming has been used with great success to build software applications and libraries. In practice, however, template metaprogramming suffers usability, reliability, and capability shortcomings, and it is not well understood in theory. Template metaprogramming has these problems because it relies on emergent properties of disparate language features that were tailored to other purposes. As a step toward solid and sound language support for metaprogramming, this paper establishes firm semantic foundations for select capabilities of template metaprogramming.