I'm reading some slides named An Overview of C++11 and C++14 presented by Mr. Leor Zolman. At Page 35 he introduces a way to do the sum operation with decltype
.
struct Sum {
template <typename T>
static T sum(T n) {
return n;
}
template <typename T, typename... Args>
/// static T sum(T n, Args... rest) {
static auto sum(T n, Args... rest) -> decltype(n + sum(rest...)) {
return n + sum(rest...);
}
};
When using this snippets forSum::sum(1, 2.3, 4, 5);
clang-3.6(from svn) fails to compile this with -std=c++11
/-std=c++1y
but gcc-4.9 succeeds. Of course without type deduction for the return type both compile, but that involves type conversion and cannot get the expected result.
So does this indicate a clang bug, or is because of a gcc extension(in respect of c++11 or c++14)?
Clang's behavior is correct. This is a GCC bug (and the claim in the presentation is also incorrect). §3.3.2 [basic.scope.pdecl]/p1,6:
1 The point of declaration for a name is immediately after its
complete declarator (Clause 8) and before its initializer (if any),
except as noted below.
6 After the point of declaration of a class member, the member name can
be looked up in the scope of its class.
And §3.3.7 [basic.scope.class]/p1 says
The following rules describe the scope of names declared in classes.
1) The potential scope of a name declared in a class consists not only
of the declarative region following the name’s point of declaration,
but also of all function bodies, default arguments,
exception-specifications, and brace-or-equal-initializers of
non-static data members in that class (including such things in nested
classes).
trailing-return-types are not in that list.
The trailing return type is part of the declarator (§8 [dcl.decl]/p4):
declarator:
ptr-declarator
noptr-declarator parameters-and-qualifiers trailing-return-type
and so the variadic version of sum
isn't in scope within its own trailing-return-type and cannot be found by name lookup.
In C++14, simply use actual return type deduction (and omit the trailing return type). In C++11, you may use a class template instead and a function template that simply forwards:
template<class T, class... Args>
struct Sum {
static auto sum(T n, Args... rest) -> decltype(n + Sum<Args...>::sum(rest...)) {
return n + Sum<Args...>::sum(rest...);
}
};
template<class T>
struct Sum<T>{
static T sum(T n) { return n; }
};
template<class T, class... Args>
auto sum(T n, Args... rest) -> decltype(Sum<T, Args...>::sum(n, rest...)){
return Sum<T, Args...>::sum(n, rest...);
}