Compile time lookup tables

There are many good reasons to have lookup tables computed at compile time. In C++ 14 this is now very easy with generalized constexpr. It took me a while thinking about it before I realised that it really was that easy! Here’s an example of one:

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>

//Trivial reimplementation of std::array with the operator[]
//methods set to constexpr
template<class T, int N>
struct array
{
	T elems[N];

	constexpr T& operator[](size_t i)
	{
		return elems[i];
	}

	constexpr const T& operator[](size_t i) const
	{
		return elems[i];
	}
};

//Function to build the lookup table
constexpr array<float, 10> foo()
{
	array<float, 10> a = {};

	for(int i=0; i < 10; i++)
		a[i] = exp(i);

	return a;
}

constexpr static array<float, 10> lut = foo<float>();

//This simply serves as a class to be instantiated.
template<int I> struct Silly
{
	Silly()
	{
		std::cout << "Hello " << I << "\n";
	}
};

int main()
{
	//Prove they're compile time constants
	Silly<(int)lut[0]> s0;
	Silly<(int)lut[1]> s1;
	Silly<(int)lut[2]> s2;
	Silly<(int)lut[3]> s3;
	Silly<(int)lut[4]> s4;
	Silly<(int)lut[5]> s5;
	Silly<(int)lut[6]> s6;
	Silly<(int)lut[7]> s7;
	Silly<(int)lut[8]> s8;
	Silly<(int)lut[9]> s9;
}

The only minor wrinkle is that std::array does not have its members set to constexpr to a sufficient degree, so it doesn’t work in this context. However, since few features are needed, a minimal reimplementation is pretty straightforward.

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