CWG 2023-12-01

CWG has no consensus to pursue a change in this area, without prejudice to a potential future paper addressed to EWG.

Notes from the October, 2005 meeting:

The CWG decided not to consider a change to the existing rules at this time without a paper exploring the issue in more detail.

Additional discussion (April, 2005):

John Spicer: Base class members are more-or-less treated as members of the class, [so] it is only natural that the base [member] would hide the template parameter.

Daveed Vandevoorde: Are base class members really “more or less” members of the class from a lookup perspective? After all, derived class members can hide base class members of the same name. So there is some pretty definite boundary between those two sets of names. IMO, the template parameters should either sit between those two sets, or they should (for lookup purposes) be treated as members of the class they parameterize (I cannot think of a practical difference between those two formulations).

John Spicer: How is [hiding template parameters] different from the fact that namespace members can be hidden by private parts of a base class? The addition of int C to N::A breaks the code in namespace M in this example:

    namespace N {
       class A {
    private:
         int C;
       };
    }

    namespace M {
       typedef int C;
       class B : public N::A {
         void f() {
             C c;
         }
       };
    }

Daveed Vandevoorde: C++ has a mechanism in place to handle such situations: qualified names. There is no such mechanism in place for template parameters.

Nathan Myers: What I see as obviously incorrect ... is simply that a name defined right where I can see it, and directly attached to the textual scope of B's class body, is ignored in favor of something found in some other file. I don't care that C1 is defined in A, I have a C1 right here that I have chosen to use. If I want A::C1, I can say so.

I doubt you'll find any regular C++ coder who doesn't find the standard behavior bizarre. If the meaning of any code is changed by fixing this behavior, the overwhelming majority of cases will be mysterious bugs magically fixed.

John Spicer: I have not heard complaints that this is actually a cause of problems in real user code. Where is the evidence that the status quo is actually causing problems?

In this example, the T2 that is found is the one from the base class. I would argue that this is natural because base class members are found as part of the lookup in class B:

    struct A {
             typedef int T2;
    };
    template <class T2> struct B : public A {
             typedef int T1;
             T1 t1;
             T2 t2;
    };

This rule that base class members hide template parameters was formalized about a dozen years ago because it fell out of the principle that base class members should be found at the same stage of lookup as derived class members, and that to do otherwise would be surprising.

Gabriel Dos Reis: The bottom line is that:

1. the proposed change is a silent change of meaning;
2. the proposed change does not make the language any more regular; the current behavior is consistent with everything else, however “surprising” that might be;
3. the proposed change does have its own downsides.

Unless presented with real major programming problems the current rules exhibit, I do not think the simple rule “scopes nest” needs a change that silently mutates program meaning.

Mike Miller: The rationale for the current specification is really very simple:

1. “Unless redeclared in the derived class, members of a base class are also considered to be members of the derived class.” (11.7 [class.derived] paragraph 2)
2. In class scope, members hide nonmembers.

That's it. Because template parameters are not members, they are hidden by member names (whether inherited or not). I don't find that “bizarre,” or even particularly surprising.

I believe these rules are straightforward and consistent, so I would be opposed to changing them. However, I am not unsympathetic toward Daveed's concern about name hijacking from base classes. How about a rule that would make a program ill-formed if a direct or inherited member hides a template parameter?

Unless this problem is a lot more prevalent than I've heard so far, I would not want to change the lookup rules; making this kind of collision a diagnosable error, however, would prevent hijacking without changing the lookup rules.

Erwin Unruh: I have a different approach that is consistent and changes the interpretation of the questionable code. At present lookup is done in this sequence:

block scope
derived class scope
base class scope
template parameters
namespace scope

If we change this order to

template parameters
block scope
derived class scope
base class scope
namespace scope

it is still consistent in that no lookup is placed between the base class and the derived class. However, it introduces another inconsistency: now scopes do not nest the same way as curly braces nest — but base classes are already inconsistent this way.

Nathan Myers: This looks entirely satisfactory. If even this seems like too big a change, it would suffice to say that finding a different name by this search order makes the program ill-formed. Of course, a compiler might issue only a portability warning in that case and use the name found Erwin's way, anyhow.

Gabriel Dos Reis: It is a simple fact, even without templates, that a writer of a derived class cannot protect himself against declaration changes in the base class.

Richard Corden: If a change is to be made, then making it ill-formed is better than just changing the lookup rules.

    struct B
    {
      typedef int T;
      virtual void bar (T const & );
    };

    template <typename T>
    struct D : public B
    {
      virtual void bar (T const & );
    };

    template class D<float>;

I think changing the semantics of the above code silently would result in very difficult-to-find problems.

Mike Miller: Another case that may need to be considered in deciding on Erwin's suggestion or the “ill-formed” alternative is the treatment of friend declarations described in 6.5.3 [basic.lookup.unqual] paragraph 10:

    struct A {
        typedef int T;
        void f(T);
    };
    template<typename T> struct B {
        friend void A::f(T);  // Currently T is A::T
    };

Notes from the March 2004 meeting:

We have some sympathy for a change, but the current rules fall straightforwardly out of the lookup rules, so they're not “wrong.” Making private members invisible also would solve this problem. We'd be willing to look at a paper proposing that.

Currently, member of nondependent base classes hide references to template parameters in the definition of a derived class template.

Consider the following example:

   class B {
      typedef void *It;    // (1)
      // ...
    };

    class M: B {};

    template<typename> X {};

    template<typename It> struct S   // (2)
        : M, X<It> {   // (3)
      S(It, It);   // (4)
      // ...
    };

As the C++ language currently stands, the name "It" in line (3) refers to the template parameter declared in line (2), but the name "It" in line (4) refers to the typedef in the private base class (declared in line (1)).

This situation is both unintuitive and a hindrance to sound software engineering. (See also the Usenet discussion at http://tinyurl.com/32q8d .) Among other things, it implies that the private section of a base class may change the meaning of the derived class, and (unlike other cases where such things happen) there is no way for the writer of the derived class to defend the code against such intrusion (e.g., by using a qualified name).

Changing this can break code that is valid today. However, such code would have to:

1. name a template parameter and not use it after the opening brace, and
2. use that same name to access a base-class name within the braces.

It has been suggested to make situations like these ill-formed. That solution is unattractive however because it still leaves the writer of a derived class template without defense against accidental name conflicts with base members. (Although at least the problem would be guaranteed to be caught at compile time.) Instead, since just about everyone's intuition agrees, I would like to see the rules changed to make class template parameters hide members of the same name in a base class.

See also issue 458.