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POrestricted-use C++ computational types
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copied!<p>I would like to have a way of defining computational types (e.g., somethng that acts like a "limited <strong>int</strong>") that do not automatically convert to their base types or to each other--behavior similar to that of typed pointers.</p> <p>For example, I'd like to be able to define <strong>XCoord</strong> and <strong>YCoord</strong> types to use for X and Y coordinates. I can do that with <strong>typedef,</strong> of course, and it makes my code more explicit, but what I really want is for the compiler to complain when I accidentally pass a Y coordinate as a function call argument when I should have used an X coordinate. Another use case is associating dimensional units with numbers, to get a complaint if one accidentally adds a height-in-meters number to a weight-in-grams.</p> <p>Yes, I know, this example is simplistic and glosses over many problems. I'd want to specify numeric values. I'd want to loop through ranges of values. I'd want to subtract two <strong>XCoord</strong> values (and get an <strong>int</strong>?). I'd want to use them as array subscripts. I'm sure there's a whole host of usages I haven't thought about in detail--and while it would be nice to have them all work transparently, I'm not averse to a little syntactic inconvenience (like a member function invocation) in some usages.</p> <p>I can mostly see how to hack together a solution with templates and operator overloading, and probably get much of what I want. I'm hoping, however, that there is a solution out there whose creators have already done the hard work and explored the corner cases and made the appropriate compromises between convenience and function.</p> <p>And, of course, they're just basic types with added compile-time checking--so the solution should have zero run-time performance penalties relative to the basic types, just like <strong>typedef</strong></p> <p>Does such a thing exist? Is a solution using language contructs so mind-numbingly complex and full of surprises that I would be better off using plain old <strong>typedefs</strong> and a <strong>lint</strong>-like tool instead? And if so, is there such a tool?</p>

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