Consider the following code:
using char_type = /*implementation defined*/;
void foo(const char_type*);
int main()
{
foo("Hello World!");
}
The string literal "Hello World!"
is a const char*
that, depending on the implementation, may not be convertible to const char_type*
. I want my code to be portable between different implementations so I thought I could define a literal to convert one char after another (this type of conversion is guaranteed to work):
consteval const char_type* operator"" _s(const char*, size_t);
and then use it like this foo("Hello World!"_s)
. However, the only implementation I can think of uses new
to allocate space and std::copy
but that would be extremely slow. I want to make the conversion at compile time and luckily I can use c++20 and the consteval
keyword to ensure that the call to the function always produces a contant expression (user defined literals are still normal functions, they can be called at runtime). Any idea how to implement this?
This conversion is possible through a two-step process: first, by declaring a class that can convert a const char *
to a char_type
array within a compile-time constructor; second, by using that class within a user-defined literal:
#include <algorithm>
template<std::size_t N>
struct string_convert {
char_type str[N] = {};
consteval string_convert(const char (&s)[N]) {
std::copy(s, s + N, str);
}
};
template<string_convert SC>
consteval auto operator ""_s()
{
return SC.str;
}
This interface allows for the following use:
void foo(const char_type *s);
foo("Hello, world!"_s);
Try it on Godbolt. Note that neither string_convert
nor the user-defined literal appear in the disassembly; all that remains is the converted array.