David Sankel explains the C++ Reflection TS, how it is used, and the direction of reflection in the C++ standardization committee.
cppnow.org
—
Presentation Slides, PDFs, Source Code and other presenter materials are available at: cppnow.org/history/2019/talks/
—
What is the C++ Reflection TS and what will it do for me? The answer: a lot. This talk explains this exciting new language feature, demonstrates how it is used, and discusses the direction reflection is taking within the C++ standardization committee.
David Sankel is a co-author of the Reflection TS and currently serves as its project editor.
—
David Sankel
Bloomberg
New York, New York
David Sankel is a Software Engineering Manager/TL at Bloomberg and an active member of the C++ Standardization Committee. His experience spans microservice architectures, CAD/CAM, computer graphics, visual programming languages, web applications, computer vision, and cryptography. He is a frequent speaker at C++ conferences and specializes in large-scale software engineering and advanced C++ topics. David’s interests include dependently typed languages, semantic domains, EDSLs, and functional reactive programming. He is the project editor of the C++ Reflection TS, a member of the Boost steering committee, and an author of serveral C++ proposals including pattern matching and language variants.
—
Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com
---
*--*
---
Why it's here
1 person recommends this
What people say. Recommended as a resource on the state and design of compile-time reflection in C++.
D
Damian Dixonon Stack Overflow • Recommends
On “How can I add reflection to a C++ application?”
Compile time reflection is now in C++26 as of March 28th 2026:
Final compile time paper.
Previous:
Reflection is not currently supported by C++ out of the box. This is sad because it makes defensive testing a pain. However it looks like compile time reflection maybe coming to C++26.
For now there are several approaches to doing reflection:
use the debug information (non portable).
Sprinkle your code with macro's/templates or some other source approach (looks ugly)
Modify a compiler such as clang/gcc to produce a database.
Use Qt moc approach
Boost Reflect
Precise and Flat Reflection
The first link looks the most promising (uses mod's to clang), the second discusses a nu…
