Hello,

What does the standard says about specializing a private member
function of a template class ?

Example:

    template <typename T> class Example {
    public:
        ...
    private:
        bool private_member_function() {
     return true;
 }
    };

    template<> bool Example<int>::private_member_function() {
 return false;
    }

Some compilers which support template specialization fail to compile
this, arguing that "private_member_function()" is private.

In other terms: do private access restrictions apply on the
specialization of "private_member_function()" ??

Thanks for your help

--
Thierry VALENTIN      email: valentin@t-surf.com
TSURF S.A.              tel: (+33)(0)3-83-67-66-29
The gOcad Company       fax: (+33)(0)3-83-67-66-34

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Thierry Valentin <valentin@t-surf.com> wrote in message news:<3C16164B.937C4197@t-surf.com>...
[
  template<class> class U { bool f(){return true;}};
  template<> bool U<int>::f() {return false;};  // is this C++?
// Some compilers reject this because "U::f is private"
]

The message is wrong.  At a guess, it's because the compiler that
spits it doesn't support specialization of individual class template
members, so it doesn't recognize the sequence `template<> bool
U<int>::f()` and complains about the only thing it does understand:
since it doesn't recognize this as a definition, it still regards `f`
as private.

Try this as a workaround.  It's ugly, but if you don't need more than
basic member-specialization capability I think it'll serve:

  template<class> bool Vf() {return true;};  // main V function
  template<class T> class V
          { bool f() { return Vf<T>(); } };  // main V template

  template<> bool Vf<int>() {return false;}; // V<int> function

Jim

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