Creating a type alias for a templated class

Question

Instead of using

std::vector<Object> ObjectArray;

I would like it to be

MyArray<Object> ObjectArray;

with all the std::vector methods preserved. (like push_back(), reserve(), ...etc)

However, using

typedef std::vector MyArray;

won't work. Should I use template instead? How?

Answer 1

What you would really want is a templated typedef. Unfortunately those are not supported in the current version of C++, but they will be added in C++0x.

For now, here's a possible workaround:

template<class T> struct My {
    typedef std::vector<T> Array;
};

My<Object>::Array ObjectArray

Whether or not that is better than simply using std::vector directly, I'll leave to you to decide.