Type Erasure in C++: The Glue between Object-Ori- ented and Generic Programming

C++ is a multi-paradigm language. The two main paradigms in C++ are object-oriented programming and generic programming. Many real-world C++ software projects use these two paradigms side by side. This creates considerable tension due to the fact that object-oriented programming is largely based on the judicious choice of types and hierarchies, while generic programming tends to cause an abundance of unrelated types. We show how type erasure can reconcile these conflicting tendencies. We present iterator type erasure as a concrete example that we have implemented and that is being used in production code at Zephyr Associates, Inc..