C++ visitor pattern handling templated string types?
- by Steve the Plant
I'm trying to use the visitor pattern to serialize the contents of objects. However one snag I'm hitting is when I'm visiting strings. My strings are of a templated type, similar to STL's basic_string. So something like:
basic_string<char_type, memory_allocator, other_possible_stuff> \\ many variations possible!
Since I can have very many different templated string types, I can't go and add them to my visitor interface. It would be ridiculous. But I can't add templates to my VisitString method because C++ prevents using templates parameters in virtual methods.
So what are my options to work around this?