Sort a std::vector by type

Question

I was watching http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013/Writing-Quick-Code-in-Cpp-Quickly and around min 36, they talk about the benefits of sorting a collection by the type of its elements if you are going to be calling virtual methods on them.

So given

class Base {};
class Der1 : public Base {};
class Der2 : public Base {};
class Der3 : public Base {};

vector<Base *> myVector;

How could you sort myVector in such a way that the elements of each type are all adjecent?

Is there any way to do that without using a virtual function in order to indentify each derived type? (Maybe using typeid?)

Answer 1

You can use type_index for this. You constructing one from a type_info object that's returned from typeid operator. It's a class with overloaded relational operators with well defined ordering, so that it is useful as a key type in associative containers and alike.

Here's an example:

#include <typeinfo>
#include <typeindex>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>

struct Base {
    virtual ~Base() {}
    virtual const char* who() = 0;
};
struct D1 : Base { const char* who() { return "D1\n"; } };
struct D2 : Base { const char* who() { return "D2\n"; } };
struct D3 : Base { const char* who() { return "D3\n"; } };

int main()
{
    std::vector<Base*> vec { new D2, new D1, new D3, new D3, new D1, new D2 };
    std::sort( vec.begin(), vec.end(),
    [](const Base* p1, const Base* p2)
    {
        return
            std::type_index(typeid(*p1)) <
            std::type_index(typeid(*p2));
    });

    for (auto p : vec) { std::cout << p->who(); }
}

The output is:

D1
D1
D2
D2
D3
D3