What is the Curiously Recurring Template Pattern (CRTP) in C ?
Jul 05, 2025 am 12:59 AMCRTP is a C static polymorphic design pattern, and its core is the inheritance of the derived class itself by the base class template parameter. 1. The definition method is that the base class uses a template to accept the derived class as a parameter, and the derived class then inherits the base class instance; 2. Its advantage is that it parses the method call during compilation to avoid the overhead of running virtual functions; 3. It is often used in static polymorphism, code reuse, interface uniformity and mixed behavior scenarios; 4. When using it, you need to pay attention to the correctness of type delivery, lack of dynamic binding, increased debugging complexity and possible code bloating problems.
CRTP (Curiously Recurring Template Pattern) is a common static polymorphic design pattern in C. Its core idea is to let a base class inherit from a derived class using template parameters. That is to say, the derived class passes itself as a template parameter to the base class.

This way of writing looks a bit strange, but it is actually very practical. It can implement polymorphic behavior without using virtual functions, avoiding runtime overhead.

How to define and use CRTP
The basic structure is as follows:
template <typename Derived> class Base { public: void interface() { static_cast<Derived*>(this)->implementation(); } }; class Derived : public Base<Derived> { public: void implementation() { // Implementation details} };
In this example, Base
is a template class that accepts a type parameter Derived
. The Derived
class inherits from Base<Derived>
, which constitutes "singular recursion".

When calling:
Derived d; d.interface(); // Derived::implementation() is actually called
The key point here is that interface()
function knows which implementation()
to call when compiled, does not require virtual function tables and does not have runtime overhead.
Common uses of CRTP
CRTP is widely used in various scenarios, and the following are some typical applications:
- Static polymorphism : replaces virtual function mechanism to reduce runtime overhead.
- Code multiplexing : Multiple derived classes can share common logic in base classes.
- Interface Unification : Provides consistent interface encapsulation for different subclasses.
- Mixins : Combining multiple functions through multiple inheritance CRTP.
To give a simple example, for example, you want to add some general operations to different numeric types:
template <typename T> class NumericMixin { public: T add(const T& other) const { return static_cast<const T*>(this)->value() other.value(); } }; class MyInt : public NumericMixin<MyInt> { int val; public: MyInt(int v) : val(v) {} int value() const { return val; } };
This way you can reuse the add()
method in different numeric classes while maintaining type safety and performance advantages.
Notes on using CRTP
Although CRTP is very powerful, there are some easy places to get stuck:
- The derived class type must be explicitly passed : if the pass is wrong, the compiler may report an error or may cause a silent error.
- Cannot bind dynamically : Because it is static polymorphism, it cannot be implemented differently through pointers/references like virtual functions.
- Debugging complexity increases : With too much template code, the error message will be difficult to understand.
- May cause code bloat : each derived class instantiates a base class code. If there are many base class methods, it will affect the binary volume.
If you just want to do runtime polymorphism, then be honest and practical. CRTP is more suitable for scenarios that require high performance, lightweight abstraction.
Basically that's it. CRTP looks tangible, but after understanding it, you will find that it is a very practical trick, especially in library writing or performance-sensitive code.
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