Re: Explicitly specializing std::min() on VC++ 2005 Express Edition

From:
"Carl Daniel [VC++ MVP]" <cpdaniel_remove_this_and_nospam@mvps.org.nospam>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.language
Date:
Wed, 2 May 2007 12:39:00 -0700
Message-ID:
<eVGAKGPjHHA.4872@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl>
"Matthias Hofmann" <hofmann@anvil-soft.com> wrote in message
news:59rte0F2l9mpjU1@mid.individual.net...

Hello everyone,

I am trying to explicitly specialize std::min() to be able to process
C-style strings, but it does not work. Here's the code I have tried:

namespace std
{
   template <> inline const char*& min<>
   ( const char*& a, const char*& b )
   {
       return std::strcmp( a, b ) < 0 ? a : b;
   }
}

What I get is the following error on Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition:

error C2912: explicit specialization; 'const char *&std::min(const char
*&,const char *&)' is not a specialization of a function template

What am I doing wrong?


Just write it as an ordinary overload and you won't have any problem:

#include <algorithm> // Defines std::min().
#include <cstring> // Defines std::strcmp().

namespace std
{
    inline const char* min(
        const char* a,
        const char* b
     )
    {
        return std::strcmp( a, b ) < 0 ? a : b;
    }
}

-cd

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