C++ Get name of type in template

The solution is

typeid(T).name()

which returns std::type_info.

typeid(T).name() is implementation defined and doesn't guarantee human readable string.

Reading cppreference.com :

Returns an implementation defined null-terminated character string containing the name of the type. No guarantees are given, in particular, the returned string can be identical for several types and change between invocations of the same program.

...

With compilers such as gcc and clang, the returned string can be piped through c++filt -t to be converted to human-readable form.

But in some cases gcc doesn't return right string. For example on my machine I have gcc whith -std=c++11 and inside template function typeid(T).name() returns "j" for "unsigned int". It's so called mangled name. To get real type name, use abi::__cxa_demangle() function (gcc only):

#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cxxabi.h>

template<typename T>
std::string type_name()
{
    int status;
    std::string tname = typeid(T).name();
    char *demangled_name = abi::__cxa_demangle(tname.c_str(), NULL, NULL, &status);
    if(status == 0) {
        tname = demangled_name;
        std::free(demangled_name);
    }   
    return tname;
}

Jesse Beder's solution is likely the best, but if you don't like the names typeid gives you (I think gcc gives you mangled names for instance), you can do something like:

template<typename T>
struct TypeParseTraits;

#define REGISTER_PARSE_TYPE(X) template <> struct TypeParseTraits<X> \
    { static const char* name; } ; const char* TypeParseTraits<X>::name = #X


REGISTER_PARSE_TYPE(int);
REGISTER_PARSE_TYPE(double);
REGISTER_PARSE_TYPE(FooClass);
// etc...

And then use it like

throw ParseError(TypeParseTraits<T>::name);

EDIT:

You could also combine the two, change name to be a function that by default calls typeid(T).name() and then only specialize for those cases where that's not acceptable.

As mentioned by Bunkar typeid(T).name is implementation defined.

To avoid this issue you can use Boost.TypeIndex library.

For example:

boost::typeindex::type_id<T>().pretty_name() // human readable