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- associated type
- An associated type is a type that is used to describe the requirements of a concept, but is not actually a parameter to the concept. For instance, the reference type returned when dereferencing an Input Iterator is expressed as an associated type. In languages that do not directly support associated types, type parameters can be used instead at some cost to brevity.
- concept
- A concept contains a set of requirements that describe a family of abstractions, typically data types. Examples of concepts include Input Iterator, Graph, and Equality Comparable.
- concept-based overloading
- Concept-based overloading
selects the most specific algorithm from a set
of specializations of a given
algorithm.
- constraint
- A constraint is a requirement placed on the
type parameters to a generic algorithm. Constraints are
typically concept constraints, meaning that the type
parameters must model a particular concept.
- lifting
- Lifting is the process by which the differences
among multiple, concrete implementations of the same algorithm are
abstracted away, producing a generic algorithm.
- model
- A model is a type or set of types that meets the requirements of a concept. An integer pointer is a model of the Input Iterator concept. "Model" can also be used as a verb to describe the relationship between a type or set of types and a concept, e.g., an adjacency list models the Graph concept.
- refinement
- Refinement is a hierarchical relationship
between two concepts. If B refines A, then
the requirements of B are a superset of the requirements
of A. Thus, the set of abstractions that model B are a subset of those that
model A, i.e., every B is an A.
- requirement
- A requirement is part of
a concept that describes the behavior of an
abstraction. Requirements tend to be syntactic (e.g., all Input
Iterators have a dereference operation), semantic (e.g., one
can traverse the sequence of values returned from a Forward
Iterator muliple times), or performance-related (e.g.,
incrementing an Input Iterator occurs in constant amortized
time).
- retroactive modeling
- Retroactive modeling allows types
to model concepts without modifying the types
in question. Retroactive modeling is very important for reusing
existing data structures with new, generic algorithms.
- specialization
- Specialization allows multiple
implementations of the same algorithm, each of which has different
concept constraints. Typically, one can implement a certain baseline
algorithm for a very small, widely applicable concept then implement
more efficient, specialized algorithms for richer concepts. In some
contexts, "specialization" may also refer to C++ (partial or full)
specialization, as for function and class templates.
- taxonomy
- A taxonomy (or concept taxonomy) is a set of interdependent concepts arranged in a lattice based on their refinement relationships. In some cases, a concept taxonomy will resemble a hierarchy because it will contain only a single refinement tree; more typically, however, a concept taxonomy will will contain several small tree-like structures.
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