A Dispatched Covariant Type System for Numerical Applications in C++

Software development in scientific computing typically deals with a large number of algorithms. An algorithm can have different implementations due to specializations for certain cases. These specializations may result in different return types. If the return types are not known a‐priori, meaning, the types cannot be derived during compile‐time, run‐time techniques are required. This topic is generally referred to as covariant return types and is typically related to the object‐oriented programming domain. Common approaches are based on dynamic polymorphism techniques which result in run‐time overhead. We present an approach to handle non‐a‐priori known return types without the need of dynamic polymorphism techniques, hence, increasing run‐time efficiency. The approach is discussed in detail based on an example in the field of computational geometry.