Re: Implicit conversion for operator

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:16:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<f3c7217c-d033-4fbc-adaa-9f7a5a0fcde3@e27g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 25, 7:27 am, pikalaw <pika...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Jul 24, 11:19 pm, Stephen Horne <sh006d3...@blueyonder.co.uk>
wrote:

On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:24:06 -0700 (PDT), pikalaw <pika...@gmail.com>
wrote:

An update:

Even this simplified code does not compile.
               complex<long > y;
       const complex<long > k(0,1);

       y = 2 * k;
But if I replace the constant 2 with 2L, the long version,
then it compiles.


When you use the literal 2, I suspect two conversions are
needed...

  2 -> 2L (from integer to long)

  2L -> <complex 2> (from long to complex)

IIRC, conversions are only done implicitly if they can be
achieved in a single step.


No. The restriction only applies to user defined conversions.
If complex wasn't a template (or if the called function wasn't a
template), then there would be no problem.

I checked the stl source, the template defines the operator template

        complex<T> operator*(const T &, const complex<T>);

So, I had expected this template to instantiate into

        complex<long> operator*(const long &, const complex<long> &)

which with one implicit conversion from int to long would
allow '2 * k' be called.


The problem is precisely that type deduction doesn't succeed for
the template. Type deduction using the first argument results
in T == int, and type deduction using the second argument
results in T == long. The compiler cannot choose between them.
(In type deduction, very few conversions are considered;
considering all conversions would far too often result in
ambiguity.) And since type deduction fails, there is no
instantiation (i.e. no function) for the compiler to do overload
resolution on.

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