Data Types With Templates
A programmer can avoid writing multiple copies of a template by using templates. C++ templates are template functions that can automatically handle different data structures without writing individual code for each of them individually. To do the same operation on different types of data structures, a developer need not write separate versions for each by overloading an already existing function. Instead a C++ developer can write a C++ template function to act with all different data structures automatically.
Templates in C++ can be used to save time and money when developing new documents. It is faster and less tedious for a C++ programmer to create template forms that are specific to text documents and for generating letter-formatted text documents. The templates save the programmer both time and money since there is no need to recreate the form from scratch each time it is needed. Instead, the template can be used as is which means the generated forms are fairly generic. Creating template forms for every possible kind of text document is an unnecessary task since templates can be re-used many times for other purposes.
When developing a program that deals with collections of non-type data, it is much easier to deal with a template that makes use of the iostream type. An example of an iostream type would be the cout here constructors that accept a character or string as an argument. The generated code does not need to deal with conversions because the iostream conversion is taken care of by the template.
A common example of templates being used extensively is the stdio library function overloading. Most systems use iostream to streamline the way input and output of characters and files are handled on the computer. Although the C++ standard says the stdio library must be declared with the types stdcout, stream and wstring, most C programs do not do this automatically so they have to be told about them during the program creation or design. This is where templates come into play.
Normal templates are just special C pre-made templates that save the programmer the trouble of creating the necessary C++ wrapper functions from scratch. One such tool is the tools menu template which allows the user to specify the C++ functions he needs during program development. Since it is just a regular template, it can be reused again and only the necessary C++ function will be generated. This is a shortcut when it comes to creating regular templates that would otherwise have to be created each time the program is used.
One more type of templates that are commonly used is the iostream template which can convert between different data types. This is especially useful for a function template that takes a character or string and converts it into a floating point number. The generated function will be faster if this data conversion is enabled in the template. There are many other data type templates that can be found in different software packages today.