From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jason Merrill <jason@cygnus.com>
To: egcs@cygnus.com, g++@cygnus.com
Subject: explicit function template qualification
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 13:12:00 -0000
Message-id: <199709282011.NAA15473@yorick.cygnus.com>
X-SW-Source: 1997-09/msg01060.html

I just checked in a patch from Mark to implement explicit specification of
template parameters to function templates.  In other words,

  template<class T>
  T min (T a, T b) { return a<b?a:b; }

  main ()
  {
    return min<int>(5, 8.0);
  }

A couple of side effects that may bite you:

1) Mangling of template instantiations now depends on the template they
   came from; in particular, template instantiations are no longer mangled
   like a non-template function.

2) Guiding decls are no longer supported.  So code like

     struct A {
       friend int operator== (const A&, const A&);
       A (int) { }
     };

     template <class T> int
     operator== (const T&, const T&)
     {
       return 0;
     }

     main ()
     {
       A a (1);
       return a == 1;
     }

   will now fail with an undefined symbol, because the friend refers to a
   normal function, not a template instantiation.  The complex and iomanip
   classes in libstdc++, for instance, had to be changed.  If the friend
   really needs to be a friend, you can add <> after the declarator (so
   operator==<>, in this example) to make it refer to a template
   instantiation.  If you had the friend decl in a template for overloading
   purposes, you're out of luck; you'll need to define any forwarding
   functions.  This is the way the language works now, sorry.

Both of these side effects can be reverted with -fguiding-decls, but that
will cause mangling clashes in some cases of explicit qualification, and
should not be used with new code.

Thanks again, Mark!

Jason