I have some code that 100% works for the use case I have. I'm just wondering if anyone can explain how and why it works.

I have a template class that sits between some code that handles threading and network communication and the library user to pass data received from the server to the user.

template <class Bar,
          class Baz,
          class BazReturnType,
          void (Bar::*BarSetterFunction)(const BazReturnType &),
          BazReturnType (Baz::*BazGetterFunction)(void) const>
class Foo
{
    Foo( Bar *bar )
        : m_bar(bar)
    {
    }

    void FooMemberFunction( const Baz *baz )
    {
        boost::bind( BarSetterFunction, m_bar,
                     boost::bind( BazGetterFunction, baz )() ) ();
    }

    Bar *m_bar;
};

This template is instantiated and used in the library depending on the types of Bar and Baz like so:

typedef Foo<MyBar,
            MyBaz,
            ReturnTypeFromBazGetterFunction,
            &MyBar::ActualSetterFunction,
            &MyBaz::ActualGetterFunction >
    MyFoo;

MyBar *bar = new MyBar;
MyBaz *baz = new MyBaz;
MyFoo *f = new MyFoo( bar );
f->FooMemberFunction( baz );

This all works and boost::bind calls the getter/setter functions to pass the data around where it needs to go. How and why does passing pointers to member functions as a template argument like in this case work?


In response to comments, I hadn't realized that pointers to member functions were valid template arguments. It's not something I had seen "in the wild" before. I tried it and it worked, but I wasn't expecting it to.

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