Re: How to subscript a CString? (CSimpleStringT::operator[])

From:
"Doug Harrison [MVP]" <dsh@mvps.org>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vc,microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:19:35 -0600
Message-ID:
<dvm1v2tuftj40cqeho9uoqoip661v5h9k8@4ax.com>
On Fri, 9 Mar 2007 09:13:14 +0900, "Norman Diamond"
<ndiamond@community.nospam> wrote:

"Tom Walker" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:uZGrxgbYHHA.944@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
[Norman Diamond:]

CString s = _T("ab");
short i = 1;
_TCHAR c = s[i];

Error C2666, ambiguous overload.


The compiler sees an ambiguity between these two possibilities:

_TCHAR c = s.operator[](i);
_TCHAR c = s.operator LPCTSTR()[i];


Thank you, though i am short of complete understanding. If i is changed to
an int then it works. So disambiguation occurs before the integral
promotion, and disambiguation fails because the conversion from short to int
ranks equally with the user-defined cast operator? ("user-defined" from the
standard's point of view because operator LPCTSTR comes from MFC not from
the standard.)


I believe this fragment models your example:

struct X
{
   int operator[](int);
   operator int*();
};

void f(X& x)
{
   int y = x[short(1)];
}

VC8 emits the error:

X>cl -c a.cpp
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for
80x86

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

a.cpp
a.cpp(9) : error C2666: 'X::operator []' : 2 overloads have similar
conversions
        a.cpp(3): could be 'int X::operator [](int)'
        or 'built-in C++ operator[(int *, short)'
        while trying to match the argument list '(X, short)'

This is a bug. Both candidate functions require promotion of short to int,
but the operator[] is an exact match for the implicit object parameter,
while the conversion operator requires conversion of it to int*, which is
worse. (Reading the error message literally, it's like the compiler ignores
the user-defined conversion that occurs when it applies operator*, and to
make matters worse, ignores the fact that short is promoted to int, so
there cannot be any such "signature" for the built-in operator.) Because
operator[] provides a better match on one of the arguments and isn't worse
on the other, it should be selected. You might want to report this here:

http://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=210

Post back with the URL, and I'll verify it.

--
Doug Harrison
Visual C++ MVP

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