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Functor

根据uniform function model，operator可以看做是function，所以存在operator function object其实是非常自然而然的事情。

cppreference Function objects#Operator function object

Arithmetic operations

std::plus

NOTE:

在std::transform 的 example中，使用了std::plus

stackoverflow What are C++ functors and their uses?

A

A functor is pretty much just a class which defines the operator(). That lets you create objects which "look like" a function:

// this is a functor
struct add_x {
  add_x(int x) : x(x) {}
  int operator()(int y) const { return x + y; }

private:
  int x;
};

// Now you can use it like this:
add_x add42(42); // create an instance of the functor class
int i = add42(8); // and "call" it
assert(i == 50); // and it added 42 to its argument

std::vector<int> in; // assume this contains a bunch of values)
std::vector<int> out(in.size());
// Pass a functor to std::transform, which calls the functor on every element 
// in the input sequence, and stores the result to the output sequence
std::transform(in.begin(), in.end(), out.begin(), add_x(1)); 
assert(out[i] == in[i] + 1); // for all i

There are a couple of nice things about functors. One is that unlike regular functions, they can contain state. The above example creates a function which adds 42 to whatever you give it. But that value 42 is not hardcoded, it was specified as a constructor argument when we created our functor instance. I could create another adder, which added 27, just by calling the constructor with a different value. This makes them nicely customizable.

As the last lines show, you often pass functors as arguments to other functions such as std::transform or the other standard library algorithms(这段话描述了functor的通常用法). You could do the same with a regular function pointer except, as I said above, functors can be "customized" because they contain state, making them more flexible (If I wanted to use a function pointer, I'd have to write a function which added exactly 1 to its argument. The functor is general, and adds whatever you initialized it with), and they are also potentially more efficient. In the above example, the compiler knows exactly which function std::transform should call. It should call add_x::operator(). That means it can inline that function call. And that makes it just as efficient as if I had manually called the function on each value of the vector.

If I had passed a function pointer instead, the compiler couldn't immediately see which function it points to, so unless it performs some fairly complex global optimizations, it'd have to dereference the pointer at runtime, and then make the call.

Why override operator()?

A

One of the primary goal when overloading operator() is to create a functor. A functor acts just like a function, but it has the advantages that it is stateful, meaning it can keep data reflecting its state between calls.

Here is a simple functor example :

struct Accumulator
{
    int counter = 0;
    int operator()(int i) { return counter += i; }
}
...
Accumulator acc;
cout << acc(10) << endl; //prints "10"
cout << acc(20) << endl; //prints "30"

Functors are heavily used with generic programming. Many STL algorithms are written in a very general way, so that you can plug-in your own function/functor into the algorithm. For example, the algorithm std::for_each allows you to apply an operation on each element of a range. It could be implemented something like that :

template <typename InputIterator, typename Functor>
void for_each(InputIterator first, InputIterator last, Functor f)
{
    while (first != last) f(*first++);
}

You see that this algorithm is very generic since it is parametrized by a function. By using the operator(), this function lets you use either a functor or a function pointer. Here's an example showing both possibilities :

void print(int i) { std::cout << i << std::endl; }
...    
std::vector<int> vec;
// Fill vec

// Using a functor
Accumulator acc;
std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), acc);
// acc.counter contains the sum of all elements of the vector

// Using a function pointer
std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), print); // prints all elements

Concerning your question about operator() overloading, well yes it is possible. You can perfectly write a functor that has several parentheses operator, as long as you respect the basic rules of method overloading (e.g. overloading only on the return type is not possible).