Re: Friend function of template inner class?

From:
Barry <dhb2000@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:17:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<33d76f1d-1a99-4bfe-9915-0175bb88b023@a18g2000pra.googlegroups.com>
On 9=D4 18=C8=D5, =CF =CE=E712=CA=B110=B7=D6, "Daniel T." <danie...@ear=
thlink.net> wrote:

The goal is to make a friend function of an inner template class...

   template < typename T >
class Foo {
public:
   class Bar {
   friend bool operator==(
      const typename Foo<T>::Bar& lhs, const typename Foo<T>::Bar& rhs);
   };

};

   template < typename T >
bool operator==(const typename Foo<T>::Bar& lhs, const typename
Foo<T>::Bar& rhs)
{
   bool result = false;
   return result;

}

#include <cassert>

int main()
{
   Foo<int>::Bar a;
   bool r = a == a;
   assert( r == false );

}

Comeau says:

"bool operator==(const Foo<T>::Bar &, const Foo<T>::Bar &)" declares =

a

non-template function -- add <> to refer to a template instance
   friend bool operator==(const typename Foo<T>::Bar& lhs, const
               ^
typename Foo<T>::Bar& rhs);


Actually, "Comeau Online" does NOT link. so it doesn't produce linkage
error

GCC compiles but complains at link time:
ZeroLink: unknown symbol '__ZeqRKN3FooIiE3BarES3_'

What am I doing wrong?


I. The easiest way to do this is define it inside of Foo::Bar;

....
....
   friend operator== (Bar const& lhs, Bar const& rhs) { ... }
....
....

II. define it out side of Foo::Bar;

according to 14.5.3/1

your friend declaration of "operator==" is not a template function,
unless you add "<T>" after "operator==", meanwhile if you do this,
you have to forward declaring this templated "operator==", which also
needs you to forward declaring template class "Foo".

But in this case, you also get into the trouble of deducing T from
"bool r = a == a;" with a==Foo<int>::Bar, so IMHO, you can't do i=
t
in this way.

Besides, according how you declared friend "operator==" inside
Foo::Bar,
which was a non-template operator, you can specialize every T for
"operator=="
out side of Foo::Bar, like this:

bool operator== (Foo<int>::Bar const& lhs,
                 Foo<int>::Bar const& rhs)
{
  ...
}

--
Best Regards
Barry

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