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From: Thomas Richter <thor@math.tu-berlin.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Java vs C++
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:53:02 +0100
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <iimf47$soo$1@news.belwue.de>, Thomas Richter wrote:
> 
>> Templates allow meta-programming, i.e. you can use the compiler to
>> generate code.
> 
> Why, what do compilers normally do?

Generate source code, or rather, evaluate expressions at compile time 
rather than run time. Compilers usually take the source code and create 
executable code from that, but the C++ template system allows you to 
instruct the compiler to do parts of this evaluation while compiling.

So long,
	Thomas