What does template <unsigned int N> mean?

When declaring a template, I am used to having this kind of code:

template <class T>

But in this question, they used:

template <unsigned int N>

I checked that it compiles. But what does it mean? Is it a non-type parameter? And if so, how can we have a template without any type parameter?

Solution 1:

Yes, it is a non-type parameter. You can have several kinds of template parameters

• Type Parameters.
  • Types
  • Templates (only classes and alias templates, no functions or variable templates)
• Non-type Parameters
  • Pointers
  • References
  • Integral constant expressions

What you have there is of the last kind. It's a compile time constant (so-called constant expression) and is of type integer or enumeration. After looking it up in the standard, i had to move class templates up into the types section - even though templates are not types. But they are called type-parameters for the purpose of describing those kinds nonetheless. You can have pointers (and also member pointers) and references to objects/functions that have external linkage (those that can be linked to from other object files and whose address is unique in the entire program). Examples:

Template type parameter:

template<typename T>
struct Container {
    T t;
};

// pass type "long" as argument.
Container<long> test;

Template integer parameter:

template<unsigned int S>
struct Vector {
    unsigned char bytes[S];
};

// pass 3 as argument.
Vector<3> test;

Template pointer parameter (passing a pointer to a function)

template<void (*F)()>
struct FunctionWrapper {
    static void call_it() { F(); }
};

// pass address of function do_it as argument.
void do_it() { }
FunctionWrapper<&do_it> test;

Template reference parameter (passing an integer)

template<int &A>
struct SillyExample {
    static void do_it() { A = 10; }
};

// pass flag as argument
int flag;
SillyExample<flag> test;

Template template parameter.

template<template<typename T> class AllocatePolicy>
struct Pool {
    void allocate(size_t n) {
        int *p = AllocatePolicy<int>::allocate(n);
    }
};

// pass the template "allocator" as argument. 
template<typename T>
struct allocator { static T * allocate(size_t n) { return 0; } };
Pool<allocator> test;

A template without any parameters is not possible. But a template without any explicit argument is possible - it has default arguments:

template<unsigned int SIZE = 3>
struct Vector {
    unsigned char buffer[SIZE];
};

Vector<> test;

Syntactically, template<> is reserved to mark an explicit template specialization, instead of a template without parameters:

template<>
struct Vector<3> {
    // alternative definition for SIZE == 3
};

Solution 2:

It's perfectly possible to template a class on an integer rather than a type. We can assign the templated value to a variable, or otherwise manipulate it in a way we might with any other integer literal:

unsigned int x = N;

In fact, we can create algorithms which evaluate at compile time (from Wikipedia):

template <int N>
struct Factorial 
{
     enum { value = N * Factorial<N - 1>::value };
};

template <>
struct Factorial<0> 
{
    enum { value = 1 };
};

// Factorial<4>::value == 24
// Factorial<0>::value == 1
void foo()
{
    int x = Factorial<4>::value; // == 24
    int y = Factorial<0>::value; // == 1
}