My previous article Code Craft – Embedding C++: Classes explored whether classes cause code bloat. There was little or no bloat and what is there assures that initialization occurs.

I'm trying to templatize a class, based on a list of values. The list can't be another class - template parameters need to be compile-time constants. So that leaves arrays as the option.My current ...

Well, if you're working in C++, you <I>should</I> be using the string class and not character arrays (IIRC, the string class has search and replace methods, but I may be hallucinating).