Re: no ADL / Koenig lookup for function calls with template parameters

From:
Alberto Ganesh Barbati <AlbertoBarbati@libero.it>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
15 Oct 2006 19:23:32 -0400
Message-ID:
<ZMyYg.4469$uv5.40089@twister1.libero.it>
cgv ha scritto:

namespace test {
   template <int i, typename T> void func(const T&) {...}
   template <typename T> void func(int i, const T&) {...}
}

If we now declare a struct A inside the same namespace:

namespace test {
   struct A { ... };
}

ADL should allow us to use func on an instance of A in the main function
without specifying the namespace test:

void main(int,char**) {
   test::A a;
   func<2>(a); // error under visual studio 8 (.Net 2005)
   func(2,a); // this is fine
}

In this code the ADL does not work for the compile time version, where the
int is passed as template argument. Now my questions:

1. Is this a bug of the Visual Studio 8 compiler or is this use of ADL not
intended by the standard?


It's not a bug. You may find it surprising but the expression
"func<2>(a)" does *not* trigger ADL. 3.4.2/1 says that ADL is applied
only "when an unqualified name is used as the postfix-expression in a
function call". So:

1) you need to have an unqualified name: that's ok, we have "func"

2) that name shall be used as a postfix-expression in a function call:
hmmm... what we have here? "func<2"? But it's not a function call! No
function call, no ADL!

"func<2>" is not a name, it's a template-id, and ADL only works with
names, not template-ids. It's deliberately made to work that way. This
is the kind of situations that would make the parser too complex if they
were allowed. Bear in mind that "func<2" can a valid expression of
boolean type if, for example, "func" is the name of an int variable. I
guess this is the price to pay for having used "<>" to delimit template
parameters...

2. Has anyone a good idea of circumvent this problem without messing up the
notation too much?


Vladimir Marko's suggestion looks intriguing to me. Maxim Yegorushkin's
post is also insightful.

Ganesh

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