Suppose I have a custom container class with a selection function like below:
template <typename T>
class Container {
public:
// ...
Container<T> select(bool (*condition)(const T&)) const;
// ...
};
As you can see, the select
function takes a pointer to a condition
function. This is a function that defines which items should be selected. So, an example use of this would be something similar to:
bool zero_selector(const int& element) {
return (element == 0); // Selects all elements that are zero
}
Now if I have a container filled with, say s = { 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 }
, I could select a subset of these that would only contain zeroes using:
t = s.select(&zero_selector); // t = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }
This is a bit clunky, and lambda expressions would make this much more elegant:
t = s.select([&] (int x) -> bool { return (x == 0); });
Is this possible? If so, what should my function prototype be for Container::select()
to accept a lambda as one of its parameters?
If not, then how is something like std::for_each
implemented that can use a lambda expression as one of its arguments? Everything I've found just gives examples of lambda functions and using std::function<>
to pass them as parameters, but nothing explains how std::for_each
works with lambda expressions.
Note that this code is for demonstration purposes only. I have tried implementing the same principles in the actual project and it doesn't work.
You need to declare your lambda as stateless (that is, with an empty capture specification [](int x)-> bool {...}
) for it to be convertable to a function pointer.