C++20 Concepts are indeed designed to provide a more straightforward and expressive way to constrain templates compared to SFINAE. However, there are still reasons to understand SFINAE:
That said, if you are working in a C++20 environment and writing new code, Concepts should generally be preferred over SFINAE where possible. They provide a cleaner, more readable way to express requirements on template arguments.
For example, instead of using SFINAE to constrain a template parameter to types that have a Render()
member like this:
#include <type_traits>
using std::enable_if_t, std::is_same_v,
std::declval;
template <typename T, enable_if_t<is_same_v<
decltype(declval<T>().Render()), void>, int> = 0
>
void Draw(T t) {
t.Render();
}
With Concepts, you could express this more directly:
#include <concepts>
template <typename T>
concept Renderable = requires(T t) {
{ t.Render() } -> std::same_as<void>;
};
template <Renderable T>
void Draw(T t) {
t.Render();
}
In summary, while Concepts are the future for constraining templates in C++, SFINAE remains an important technique to understand, especially for working with existing codebases and in environments without full C++20Â support.
Answers to questions are automatically generated and may not have been reviewed.
Learn how SFINAE allows templates to remove themselves from overload resolution based on their arguments, and apply it in practical examples.