Strange VC++ compile error, C2244

Question

Take a look at this peice of code:

template 
Pointer::Iterator> BinaryTree::GetBegi         


        

Answer 1

For those interested, I tried writing a minimal sample reproducing the problem:

template 
struct Pointer {};

template 
struct Collection {
    struct Iterator {};
};

template 
struct BinaryTree : Collection{
    Pointer::Iterator> GetBeginning() const;

    struct BinaryTreeIterator : Collection::Iterator {
        template 
        BinaryTreeIterator(BinaryTreeIterator*, X) {}
        struct Position {
            static int atBeginning() { return 0; }
        };
    };
};

template 
Pointer::Iterator> BinaryTree::GetBeginning() const
{
    return Pointer::Iterator>();
}

int main(){
    BinaryTree bt;
    bt.GetBeginning();
}

And yes, I get the error too. I can't see any obvious errors in what we've seen of your code, but then again, just this example has used more nested classes and inheritance than most sane C++ programmers do in a year, so I can't say for sure that your code is or isn't correct.

Moreover, I've had to guess quite a bit to piece this together. (What's atBeginning supposed to be? What are the actual class interfaces?)

But I suspect it'd work better (and be more readable and easier to debug) if you didn't inherit everything from everything else.

Update I tried compiling the above with GCC and Comeau's online compiler, and both accepted it. So it seems like it could be a compiler bug.