C++11 type trait to differentiate between enum class and regular enum

Question

I\'m writing a promotion template alias similar to boost::promote but for C++11. The purpose of this is to avoid warnings when retrieving arguments from varidic functions. e

Answer 1

Here is a possible solution:

#include <type_traits>

template<typename E>
using is_scoped_enum = std::integral_constant<
    bool,
    std::is_enum<E>::value && !std::is_convertible<E, int>::value>;

The solution exploits a difference in behavior between scoped and unscoped enumerations specified in Paragraph 7.2/9 of the C++11 Standard:

The value of an enumerator or an object of an unscoped enumeration type is converted to an integer by integral promotion (4.5). [...] Note that this implicit enum to int conversion is not provided for a scoped enumeration. [...]

Here is a demonstration of how you would use it:

enum class E1 { };
enum E2 { };
struct X { };

int main()
{
    // Will not fire
    static_assert(is_scoped_enum<E1>::value, "Ouch!");

    // Will fire
    static_assert(is_scoped_enum<E2>::value, "Ouch!");

    // Will fire
    static_assert(is_scoped_enum<X>::value, "Ouch!");
}

And here is a live example.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Thanks to Daniel Frey for pointing out that my previous approach would only work as long as there is no user-defined overload of operator +.