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Templates

TODO​

This is a skeletal design, added to support the overview. It should not be treated as accepted by the core team; rather, it is a placeholder until we have more time to examine this detail. Please feel welcome to rewrite and update as appropriate.

Overview​

Carbon templates follow the same fundamental paradigm as C++ templates: they are instantiated, resulting in late type checking, duck typing, and lazy binding. They both enable interoperability between Carbon and C++ and address some (hopefully limited) use cases where the type checking rigor imposed by generics isn't helpful.

Types with template parameters​

When parameterizing a user-defined type, the parameters can be marked as template parameters. The resulting type-function will instantiate the parameterized definition with the provided arguments to produce a complete type when used. Note that only the parameters marked as having this template behavior are subject to full instantiation -- other parameters will be type checked and bound early to the extent possible. For example:

class Stack(template T:! Type) {
  var storage: Array(T);

  fn Push[addr me: Self*](value: T);
  fn Pop[addr me: Self*]() -> T;
}

This both defines a parameterized type (Stack) and uses one (Array). Within the definition of the type, the template type parameter T can be used in all of the places a normal type would be used, and it will only by type checked on instantiation.

Functions with template parameters​

Both deduced and explicit function parameters in Carbon can be marked as template parameters. When called, the arguments to these parameters trigger instantiation of the function definition, fully type checking and resolving that definition after substituting in the provided (or computed if deduced) arguments. The runtime call then passes the remaining arguments to the resulting complete definition.

fn Convert[template T:! Type](source: T, template U:! Type) -> U {
  var converted: U = source;
  return converted;
}

fn Foo(i: i32) -> f32 {
  // Instantiates with the `T` deduced argument set to `i32` and the `U`
  // explicit argument set to `f32`, then calls with the runtime value `i`.
  return Convert(i, f32);
}

Here we deduce one type parameter and explicitly pass another. It is not possible to explicitly pass a deduced type parameter, instead the call site should cast or convert the argument to control the deduction. The explicit type is passed after a runtime parameter. While this makes that type unavailable to the declaration of that runtime parameter, it still is a template parameter and available to use as a type even within the remaining parts of the function declaration.

Overloading​

An important feature of templates in C++ is the ability to customize how they end up specialized for specific types. Because template parameters (whether as type parameters or function parameters) are pattern matched, we expect to leverage pattern matching techniques to provide "better match" definitions that are selected analogously to specializations in C++ templates. When expressed through pattern matching, this may enable things beyond just template parameter specialization, but that is an area that we want to explore cautiously.

Constraining templates with interfaces​

Because we consider only specific parameters to be templated and they could be individually migrated to a constrained interface using the generics system, constraining templates themselves may be less critical. Instead, we expect parameterized types and functions may use a mixture of generic parameters and templated parameters based on where they are constrained.

However, if there are still use cases, we would like to explore applying the interface constraints of the generics system directly to template parameters rather than create a new constraint system.