Compile time deduction of template member function - templates

Question

Is it possible to get the return type of a template member function at compile time?
I guess I need something along the lines of:
template<class T>
struct SomeClass
{
// T must have a function foo(int), but do not know the
// return type, it could be anything
using RType = ??? T::foo(int) ???; // Is it possible to deduce it here?
}

Answer 1

What you want to do can be achieved by using the decltype operator together with the std::declval template.
decltype(EXPRESSION) yields – at compile time – the type that EXPRESSION would have. The EXPRESSION itself is never evaluated. This is much like sizeof(EXPRESSION) returns the size of whatever EXPRESSION evaluates to without ever actually evaluating it.
There is only one problem: Your foo is a non-static member function so writing decltype(T::foo(1)) is an error. We somehow need to obtain an instance of T. Even if we know nothing about its constructor, we can use std::declval to obtain a reference to an instance of it. This is a purely compile-time thing. std::declval is actually never defined (only declared) so don't attempt to evaluate it at run-time.
Here is how it would look together.
#include <type_traits>
template <typename SomeT>
struct Something
{
using RetT = decltype(std::declval<SomeT>().foo(1));
};
To see that it actually works, consider this example.
struct Bar
{
float
foo(int);
};
struct Baz
{
void
foo(int);
};
int
main()
{
static_assert(std::is_same<float, Something<Bar>::RetT>::value, "");
static_assert(std::is_same<void, Something<Baz>::RetT>::value, "");
}
While this does what I think you have asked for, it is not ideal in the sense that if you attempt to instantiate Something<T> with a T that doesn't have an appropriate foo member, you'll get a hard compiler error. It would be better to move the type computation into the template arguments such that you can benefit from the SFINAE rule.
template <typename SomeT,
typename RetT = decltype(std::declval<SomeT>().foo(1))>
struct Something
{
// Can use RetT here ...
};

Answer 2

If you know the argument types to your function call the following should work:
template<typename T>
struct X
{
typedef typename decltype(std::declval<T>.foo(std::declval<int>())) type;
};
If you don't you can still deduce the type of the function pointer and extract the return type:
template<class F>
struct return_type;
template<class C, class R, class... Args>
struct return_type<R(C::*)(Args...)>
{ using type = R; };
template<typename T>
struct X
{
typedef typename return_type<decltype(&T::foo)>::type type;
};
This will fail if T::foo is an overloaded function or member of T.
Unfortunately it is only possible to know the return type of some expression if you know with what arguments you are going to call it (which, unfortunately, often is a different place from where you need to know the return type)...