A Program Transformation Technique to Support AOP within C++ Template

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) provides assistance in modularizing concerns that crosscut the boundaries of system decomposition. Aspects have the potential to interact with many different kinds of language constructs in order to modularize crosscutting concerns. Although several aspect languages have demonstrated advantages in applying aspects to traditional modularization boundaries (e.g., object-oriented hierarchies), additional language concepts such as parametric polymorphism can also benefit from aspects. Many popular programming languages support parametric polymorphism (e.g., C++ templates), but the combination of aspects and generics is a topic in need of further investigation. The paper enumerates the general challenges of uniting aspects with C++ templates. It also underlines the need for new language constructs to extend AOP support to C++ templates and provides an initial solution to realize this goal.