Is there a method to decide whether something can be constexpr evaluated, and use the result as a constexpr boolean? My simplified use case is as follows:
template <typename base>
class derived
{
template<size_t size>
void do_stuff() { (...) }
void do_stuff(size_t size) { (...) }
public:
void execute()
{
if constexpr(is_constexpr(base::get_data())
{
do_stuff<base::get_data()>();
}
else
{
do_stuff(base::get_data());
}
}
};
My target is C++2a.
I found the following reddit thread, but I'm not a big fan of the macros. https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/7c208c/is_constexpr_a_macro_that_check_if_an_expression/
Here's another solution, which is more generic (applicable to any expression, without defining a separate template each time).
This solution leverages that (1) lambda expressions can be constexpr as of C++17 (2) the type of a captureless lambda is default constructible as of C++20.
The idea is, the overload that returns true
is selected when and only when Lambda{}()
can appear within a template argument, which effectively requires the lambda invocation to be a constant expression.
template<class Lambda, int=(Lambda{}(), 0)>
constexpr bool is_constexpr(Lambda) { return true; }
constexpr bool is_constexpr(...) { return false; }
template <typename base>
class derived
{
// ...
void execute()
{
if constexpr(is_constexpr([]{ base::get_data(); }))
do_stuff<base::get_data()>();
else
do_stuff(base::get_data());
}
}