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a while back, a guy i worked with came up with a really cool bit of code; it would tell you if one class inherited from another, and this test was done at compile time.
it was used like this:
Inheritance<Base,Derived>::exists
i could really use it now, but i don't have his code and i don't know how he did it. any ideas?
it probably used dynamic_cast. it could be done like this at runtime:
Code:template<typename Base, typename Derived>
bool InheritanceExists()
{
Derived* derived;
return dynamic_cast<Base*>(derived);
}
actually it didn't. it was a pure compile-time operation. i just found it. it's on p34 of alexandrescu's modern c++.
Boost has some interesting meta template stuff.
definitely not worth pulling in boost over. the implementation is trivial, actually.
it just so happens this is in the book preview:
Modern C++ design: generic programming and design patterns applied - Andrei Alexandrescu - Google Books
Boost has a lot of other goodies, too. Boost is always worth having.