Variadic templates and std::bind

You can (partially) specialize std::is_placeholder for specializations of a custom template. This way, you can introduce a placeholder generator via the usual int_sequence technique.

From [func.bind.isplace]/2

The implementation shall provide a definition that has the BaseCharacteristic of integral_constant<int, J> if T is the type of std::placeholders::_J, otherwise it shall have a BaseCharacteristic of integral_constant<int, 0>. A program may specialize this template for a user-defined type T to have a BaseCharacteristic of integral_constant<int, N> with N > 0 to indicate that T should be treated as a placeholder type.

The usual int_sequence:

#include <cstddef>

template<int...> struct int_sequence {};

template<int N, int... Is> struct make_int_sequence
    : make_int_sequence<N-1, N-1, Is...> {};
template<int... Is> struct make_int_sequence<0, Is...>
    : int_sequence<Is...> {};

The custom placeholder template and specialization of is_placeholder:

template<int> // begin with 0 here!
struct placeholder_template
{};

#include <functional>
#include <type_traits>

namespace std
{
    template<int N>
    struct is_placeholder< placeholder_template<N> >
        : integral_constant<int, N+1> // the one is important
    {};
}

I'm not sure where to introduce the 1; the places I considered are all not optimal.

Using it to write some binder:

template<class Ret, class... Args, int... Is>
void my_bind(Ret (*p)(Args...), int_sequence<Is...>)
{
    auto x = std::bind(p, placeholder_template<Is>{}...);
    x( Args(42)... );
}

template<class Ret, class... Args>
void my_bind(Ret (*p)(Args...))
{
    my_bind(p, make_int_sequence< sizeof...(Args) >{});
}

Usage example of the binder:

#include <iostream>

void foo(double, char, int) { std::cout << __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ << "\n"; }
void bar(bool, short) { std::cout << __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ << "\n"; }

int main()
{
    my_bind(foo);
    my_bind(bar);
}