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    CWG Issue 228</TITLE>
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<P><EM>This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21
  Core Issues List revision 118b.
  See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official
  list.</EM></P>
<P>2025-09-28</P>
<HR>
<A NAME="228"></A><H4>228.
  
Use of <TT>template</TT> keyword with non-member templates
</H4>
<B>Section: </B>13.3&#160; [<A href="https://wg21.link/temp.names">temp.names</A>]
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Status: </B>CD1
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Submitter: </B>Daveed Vandevoorde
 &#160;&#160;&#160;

 <B>Date: </B>4 May 2000<BR>


<P>[Voted into WP at April 2003 meeting.]</P>



<P>Consider the following example:</P>

<PRE>
    template&lt;class T&gt;
    struct X {
       virtual void f();
    };

    template&lt;class T&gt;
    struct Y {
       void g(X&lt;T&gt; *p) {
	  p-&gt;template X&lt;T&gt;::f();
       }
    };
</PRE>

<P>This is an error because <TT>X</TT> is not a member template;
13.3 [<A href="https://wg21.link/temp.names#5">temp.names</A>] paragraph 5 says:</P>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
If a name prefixed by the keyword <TT>template</TT> is not the name
of a member template, the program is ill-formed.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>In a way this makes perfect sense: <TT>X</TT> is found to be a template
using ordinary lookup even though <TT>p</TT> has a dependent type.
However, I think this makes the use of the <TT>template</TT> prefix
even harder to teach.</P>

<P>Was this intentionally outlawed?</P>

<P><B>Proposed Resolution (4/02):</B></P>

<P>Elide the first use of the word "member" in
13.3 [<A href="https://wg21.link/temp.names#5">temp.names</A>] paragraph 5 so that its first sentence reads:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
If a name prefixed by the keyword <TT>template</TT> is not the name of a
<DEL>member</DEL> template, the program is ill-formed.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

<BR><BR>
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