Re: References to references

From:
legalize+jeeves@mail.xmission.com (Richard)
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:25:42 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<jde7it$v9c$1@news.xmission.com>
[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Kelvin Chung <kelvSYC@mac.com> spake the secret code
<2011122621495936780-kelvSYC@maccom> thusly:

I'm getting an unforseen problem when I'm trying to compile code for
older compilers. The following code compiles in clang 3.0 on a Mac:

template <class Key>
struct Foo {
    typedef Key& key_type;

    virtual Bar mapKey(const key_type& key) = 0;
};

However, when I compile with gcc 4.1.2 on SUSE Linux, I get "cannot
declare reference to 'Key&', specifically wrt to mapKey().

I'm trying to find the root cause of this: Is it a C++11-specifc thing,
and thus barfing on gcc 4.1.2, which IIRC has no C++11 support? Is it
simply that I am expecting that "const key_type&" resolves to "Key&"
(ie. the references "collapse"), when it shouldn't? What should be the
workaround for getting this snippet to compile under gcc 4.1.2?


You can't take a reference of a reference; this is not C++11 specific,
it has always been this way.

Look at Boost.TypeTraits for a way to identify if a type has a
reference and add one if it doesn't.
<http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/type_traits/doc/html/index.html>
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