Re: friend template overload problem

From:
"=?iso-8859-1?q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?=" <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:36:27 CST
Message-ID:
<1174554108.781743.311590@e1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On 22 Mrz., 04:14, Helmut Jarausch <jarau...@skynet.be> wrote:

could anybody please explain to me what's wrong with
the following code

template <typename INT,INT P> class Zp;

template <typename INT,INT P>
Zp<INT,P> operator-(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const Zp<INT,P>& b); // the
binary op-

template <typename INT,INT P>
class Zp {

public:
   Zp operator-() const; // that's the unary operator -
   // vvvvvvvvvvvv this is binary operator -
   friend Zp<INT,P> operator- <>(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const Zp<INT,P>& b);
// this produces
// error: declaration of 'operator-' as non-function
// error: expected ';' before '<' token

};

Many thanks for your help,


This is a tricky one ;-)

The fix is easy, you simply could

(1) invert the unary operator-declaration with the friend
declaration:

template <typename INT,INT P>
class Zp {
public:
   friend Zp<INT,P> operator- <>(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const Zp<INT,P>&
b);
   Zp operator-() const;
};

The problem is that the friend declaration attempts
to match with the most inner declaration of operator-,
which is the member operator-. This follows from
unqualified lookup rules. Because the above solution
depends on order of declarations, here are alternatives:

(2) If the binary operator would have been located in
another namespace than global namespace, a qualified
declaration would have worked also:

namespace N {

template <typename INT,INT P> class Zp;

template <typename INT,INT P>
Zp<INT,P> operator-(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const Zp<INT,P>& b);

template <typename INT,INT P>
class Zp {
public:
   Zp operator-() const;
   friend Zp<INT,P> N::operator- <>(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const
Zp<INT,P>& b);
};

}

(3) The following works even with an absolute namespace
qualification and does not have the disadvantages of the previous
ones (be aware that the parentheses around operator-
are mandatory, otherwise it will be parsed as Zp<INT,P>::operator-,
which would specify a member again;-)):

template <typename INT,INT P> class Zp;

template <typename INT,INT P>
Zp<INT,P> operator-(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const Zp<INT,P>& b);

template <typename INT,INT P>
class Zp {
public:
   Zp operator-() const;
   friend Zp<INT,P> (::operator- <>)(const Zp<INT,P>& a, const
Zp<INT,P>& b);
};

Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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