type_safe

type_safe provides zero overhead abstractions that use the C++ type system to prevent bugs.

Zero overhead abstractions here and in following mean abstractions that have no cost with optimizations enabled, but may lead to slightly lower runtime in debug mode, especially when assertions for this library are enabled.

The library features cannot really explained in the scope of this readme, I highly suggest that you check out the first and second blog post and the examples.

Features

• ts::integer<T> - a zero overhead wrapper over a built-in integer type
  • no default constructor to force meaningful initialization
  • no "lossy" conversions (i.e. from a bigger type or a type with a different signedness)
  • no mixed arithmetic/comparision with floating points or integer types of a different signedness
  • over/underflow is undefined behavior in release mode - even for unsigned integers, enabling compiler optimizations
• ts::floating_point<T> - a zero overhead wrapper over a built-in floating point
  • no default constructor to force meaningful initialization
  • no "lossy" conversion (i.e. from a bigger type)
  • no "lossy" comparisions
  • no mixed arithmetic/comparision with integers
• ts::boolean - a zero overhead wrapper over bool
  • no default constructor to force meaningful initialization
  • no conversion from integer values
  • no arithmetic operators
• ts::flag - an improved flag type, better than a regular bool or ts::boolean
• ts::narrow_cast<T> - to actually do narrow conversions
• aliases of std:: integer/floating point types that either use the wrapper or the built-in types, depending on a macro
• ts::basic_optional<StoragePolicy> - a generic, improved std::optional that is fully monadic, also ts::optional<T> and ts::optional_ref<T> aliases
• ts::constrained_type<T, Constraint, Verifier> - a wrapper over some type that verifies that a certain constraint is always fulfilled
  • ts::constraints::* - predefined constraints like non_null, non_empty, ...
  • ts::tagged_type<T, Constraint> - constrained type without checking, useful for tagging
  • ts::bounded_type<T> - constrained type that ensures a value in a certain interval
  • ts::clamped_type<T> - constrained type that clamps a value to ensure that it is in the certain interval
• ts::strong_typedef - a generic facility to create strong typedefs more easily

Installation

Header-only, just copy the files in your project. You need to add include/type_safe to your include path as well as make debug_assert.hpp available. The repository is included as git submodule, simply run git submodule update --init and add external/debug_assert to the include path. You also need to enable C++11.

Behavior can be customized with the following macros:

• TYPE_SAFE_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS (default is 1): whether or not assertions are enabled in this library
• TYPE_SAFE_ENABLE_WRAPPER (default is 1): whether or not the typedefs in type_safe/types.hpp use the wrapper classes

If you're using CMake there is the target type_safe available after you've called add_subdirectory(path/to/type_safe). Simply link this target to your target and it will setup everything automagically. For convenience the macros are also mapped to CMake options of the same name.

Documentation

Currently only inline comments available, not extracted. I need to fix standardese first but got sidelined writing a type safe library...