C++11 : make_tuple Tutorial & Example

In this article we will discuss what is std::make_tuple and why do we need it.

Initializing a std::tuple

We can initialize a std::tuple by passing elements as arguments in constructor i.e.

// Creating and Initializing a tuple
std::tuple<int, double, std::string> result1 { 22, 19.28, "text" };

You might have observed that we need to specify type of arguments as template arguments in tuple. Sometime its painful if number of elements are more.

With this there is no way to deduce them automatically i.e. Following code will give compile error i.e.

// Compile error, as no way to deduce the types of elements in tuple
auto result { 22, 19.28, "text" }; // Compile error

Error

error: unable to deduce ‘std::initializer_list<_Tp>’ from ‘{22, 1.9280000000000001e+1, "text"}’
auto result { 22, 19.28, "text" };

But c++11 provided something else that can help us to avoid this pain i.e. std::make_tuple.

std::make_tuple

std::make_tuple creates a std::tuple object by deducing the target types of elements in tuple from the types of arguments.

Let’s understand by an example,

// Creating a tuple using std::make_tuple
auto result2 = std::make_tuple( 7, 9.8, "text" );

Here we didn’t specify any type of the element encapsulated by std::tuple object result.

std::make_tuple did following things,

std::make_tuple took three arguments and automatically deduced their types as int, double and string. Then it created a std::tuple<int, double, std::string> object internally and initialized it and returned it.

// Creating a tuple using std::make_tuple
auto result = std::make_tuple( 7, 9.8, "text" );

So, basically std::make_tuple helps in automatic deduction of tuple types.

Complete example is as follows,

#include <iostream>
#include <tuple>
#include <string>

int main()
{
	// Creating and Initializing a tuple
	std::tuple<int, double, std::string> result1 { 22, 19.28, "text" };

	// Compile error, as no way to deduce the types of elements in tuple
	//auto result { 22, 19.28, "text" }; // Compile error

	// Creating a tuple using std::make_tuple
	auto result2 = std::make_tuple( 7, 9.8, "text" );

	// std::make_tuple automatically deduced the type and created tuple

	// Print values
	std::cout << "int value = " << std::get < 0 > (result2) << std::endl;
	std::cout << "double value = " << std::get < 1 > (result2) << std::endl;
	std::cout << "string value = " << std::get < 2 > (result2) << std::endl;

	return 0;
}

Output:

int value = 7
double value = 9.8
string value = text

For Basic Usage of std::tuple refer this article,

C++11 : std::tuple Tutorial & Examples