Its seems every year (see references at the bottom) someone writes about having strong typedefs in C++. Hey, it’s end of February and nobody did it for 2018 yet!?

The idea is simple (or so it seems). Suppose you would like to distinguish variables that have the same basic type and have the compiler enforce that, this does not seem possible at first glance. For example, this will not compile:

using AxisId = int; using ControllerId = int; void f(AxisId id) {} void f(ControllerId id) {} // error: function 'void f(AxisId)' already has a body void g(AxisId id) {} void foo() { ControllerId controllerA(42); g(controllerA); // very wrong, but compiles fine and without warning }

The idea here is that axes and controllers are identified by an index, the indexes are not unique, both ranges contain 0, 1, 2 3, etc… Now function g() should only be called with an AxisId, but if you were to give it ‘1’ or a ControllerId, that would happily compile. Also as the example shows, typedef’ed basic types cannot be used to overload a method.

This case is basically now a solved problem in C++11 with the introduction of ‘enum class’, as it can do a special trick for integers:

enum class ControllerId // regular enum class ControllerId { A, B, C }; enum class AxisId // specifically valued Id { x = 0, y = 1, z = 2 }; void f(AxisId id) {} void f(ControllerId id) {} // Ok, ControllerId is a unique type void g(AxisId id) {} { ControllerId controllerA(42); g(controllerA); // error: cannot convert argument 1 from 'ControllerId' to 'AxisId' // nice, very clear message! }

I should mention at this point, that there is a ‘gotcha’ in C++17 but not in earlier versions, which future textbooks will now have to refer to as the well known anti-pattern called ‘Ólafur’s Fruit Salad‘:

enum class Apple; enum class Orange; Apple a{3}; Orange o{5}; //o = a; // doesn't compile Apple fruit_salad{Orange{2}}; // compiles without warning! ‏

Hopefully this will be addressed in C++20.

Try this on godbolt.org to see if your compiler is affected.

However, what about the case where there is not a known/fixed amount of members:

using Days = int; using Weeks = int; int getWorkingHours(Days value) { return value* 8; } int getWorkingHours(Weeks value) // error: function 'int getWorkingHours(int)' already has a body { return value* 8 * 5; }

Here it would have been nice to overload the method ‘getWorkingHours’ with arguments of different type for ‘day’ or ‘week’. It turns out this is actually not all that hard, lets have the enum class do its thing:

#include <type_traits> #include <iostream> enum class Days : unsigned int {}; // notice: enum declarations without any specific values enum class Weeks : unsigned int {}; template <typename T> auto value_of(const T& t) -> std::underlying_type_t < T > { static_assert(std::is_enum<T>::value, "argument of value_of is not an enum or enum class"); return static_cast<std::underlying_type_t<T>>(t); } int getWorkingHours(Days value) { return value_of(value) * 8; } int getWorkingHours(Weeks value) { return value_of(value) * 8 * 5; } void strong_integer() { std::cout << "hours in 2 days: " << getWorkingHours(Days(2)) << "

"; // outputs: 16 std::cout << "hours in 2 weeks: " << getWorkingHours(Weeks(2)) << "

"; // outputs: 80 }

What happens here is that by specifying the enum class without any specific values it can only be assigned by being explicit about it, which is exactly what we want. note: the standard is not specific about the underlying type you get when no values are specified, as in enum class Days; so I make a point of specifying it explicitly as unsigned int in these cases.

The ‘value_of’ template is not strictly necessary, a ‘static_cast (x)’ would also work just as well. However you would have to make sure you specify the correct underlying type, otherwise you risk a narrowing conversion without any diagnostic warnings because they would be silenced by the static_cast<>. By using the value_of template you don’t have to repeat yourself and if the underlying type would change at some point appropriate warnings would be emitted.

So, this seems to work quite well of integer values, but what about other basic types, like for example floating point numbers?

Various use cases for strong types

These are examples of applications of strong types from different fields. The use cases vary slightly but they are all in the same category of distinct basic types.

distinct units: disallow mixing up quantities in different dimensions (distance, weight, volume, etc.)

distinct ids: disallow mixing up the handles or ids of different kinds

distinct memory: disallow mixing real-, virtual- memory addresses and offsets

another way to look at the application of the district types is:

make overloading possible for different variables of the same basic type.

make non-sensible operations compilation errors, such as dividing by an offset or subtracting an address from an offset.

verifying data: have user-input validated and put into a verified type

This is an example of an fairly simple ‘Strong type’. Different instances of StrongType<> are not interchangeable, so you as the developer will have to be explicit about any conversion.

template <typename T, typename ID> class StrongType { public: StrongType(const StrongType&) = default; StrongType(StrongType&& value) { m_value = value.m_value; } StrongType& operator=(const StrongType&) = default; StrongType& operator=(StrongType&& other) { if (this != &other) { m_value = other.m_value; } return *this; } explicit StrongType(const T& value) : m_value(value) {} // basic type constructor virtual ~StrongType() = default; T get() const { return m_value; } void set(const T& value) { m_value = value; } private: T m_value; }; template <typename S, typename ID> std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& os, const StrongType<S, ID>& value) { os << value.get(); return os; } struct tag_meter {}; struct tag_millimeter {}; using Meters = StrongType < double, tag_meter >; using MilliMeters = StrongType < double, tag_millimeter >; MilliMeters toMillimeters(Meters m) { return MilliMeters(m.get() * 1000.0); // explicit construction and .get() are needed } Meters toMeters(MilliMeters m) { return Meters(m.get() / 1000.0); } void strong_double() { Meters m = Meters(1.2); auto mm = toMillimeters(m); auto m2 = toMeters(mm); std::cout << "the length is: " << mm << "

"; std::cout << "the length is: " << m2 << "

"; //mm = m2; // no operator found which takes a right-hand operand of type 'Meters' //m2 = mm; // no operator found which takes a right-hand operand of type 'MilliMeters' }

I have made the ‘template class StrongType’ a little more verbose by implementing the move assignment operator and move constructor explicitly so it can be used on somewhat older compilers as well. On a C++17 compliant compilers all rule-of-five constructors could be defaulted. Also the tag type struct does not have to be on separate line, it can be defined in-place like so:

using Meters = StrongType < double, struct tag_meter() >; using MilliMeters = StrongType < double, struct tag_millimeter() >;

So this is all very nice, but we can take it one step further; we could implement assignment operators for Meters on a Millimeter class and vice versa.

namespace si { class MilliMeters; using MetersType = StrongType < double, tag_meter > ; class Meters : public MetersType { public: Meters(double v) : MetersType(v) {} Meters(const MilliMeters& v); Meters& operator=(MilliMeters); }; using MilliMetersType = StrongType < double, tag_millimeter >; class MilliMeters : public MilliMetersType { public: MilliMeters(double v) : MilliMetersType(v) {} MilliMeters(const Meters& v); MilliMeters& operator=(Meters); }; Meters::Meters(const MilliMeters& v) : MetersType(v.get() / 1000.0) {} Meters& Meters::operator=(MilliMeters value) { set(value.get() / 1000.0); return *this; } MilliMeters::MilliMeters(const Meters& v) : MilliMetersType(v.get() * 1000.0) {} MilliMeters& MilliMeters::operator=(Meters value) { set(value.get() * 1000.0); return *this; } void h(MilliMeters value) {} void foo() { Meters m = Meters(2); h(m); } }

As you can see, this is becoming more and more cumbersome. It makes sense to be able to add/subtract Meters from Millimeters. But that would also make sense for types like: picometers, micrometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, etc etc. And why not addition ? Division? Multiplication ? Meters squared could actually return a new type SquareMeters… The amount of operations quickly explodes and becomes very tedious to implement. Fortunately, ideas are rarely unique or new, so searching for an existing solution quickly yielded one: Boost.Units

The Boost.Units library offers many SI units and common operations out of the box. Its documentation leaves much to be desired, but watching Robert Ramey’s CPPCON 2015 talk “Boost Units Library for Correct Code” is a good introduction.

Alternatively, a good resource is Jonathan Müller’s type-safe library, for more information read this blog post.

Another also very useful application is in string verification:

struct raw {}; struct verified {}; using RawData = StrongType < std::string, raw > ; using VerifiedData = StrongType < std::string, verified >; VerifiedData verify(const RawData& data) { return VerifiedData(""); } void process(const VerifiedData& data) {}

Here there is no way for the ‘process’ method to accept un-verified data as an input. This is a very nice compiler check to have and as Ben Deane mentioned in his talk ‘Using types effectively’ can also promote a clear separation of responsibilities. The process method does not have to do any checks because it can be sure no unverified data will come in.

To summarize: Strong types can be implemented in C++ and getting basic type safety that way is not that difficult. The downside of doing a naive implementation is that for doing arithmetic it requires lots of explicit constructions and .get() calls which is ugly, or at least, no longer looks natural. For SI units Boost.Units can offer an alternative. As a final note: the ideas in this post were distilled from the references below, the code samples above were written be me and can be used freely.

References

recently updated: (6/6/2019) https://github.com/anthonywilliams/strong_typedef

C++Now 2017: Jonathan Müller “Type-safe Programming”

Arne Mertz’ 2016 Simplify C++ article “Use Stronger Types!”

CppCon 2016: Ben Deane “Using Types Effectively”

CppCon 2015: Kyle Markley “Extreme Type Safety with Opaque Typedefs” => Link to Kyle Markley’s sources

CppCon 2015: Robert Ramey “Boost Units Library for Correct Code”

The blog at the bottom of the sea – Getting Strongly Typed Typedefs Using Phantom Types

Jonathan Müller’s blog about strong typedefs => Link to Jonathan Müller’s sources

Link to Opaque typedef proposal

WG21/N1891 = J16/05-0151 Walter E. Brown’s 2005 Opaque Typedefs proposal

N2141 = 06-0211 Alisdair Meredith Strong Typedefs in C++09 Boost BOOST_STRONG_TYPEDEF