On Nov 21, 2007 10:07 PM, Andreas Harnack <ah.boost.04@justmail.de> wrote:
So, it seems to me, that the template argument does not provide any additional value but only makes the expression above unnecessary complicate. Am I missing something?
Disclaimer: I am not part of the C++ Standards Committe. All that follow are based on my interpretations of the situation. Remember that some compilers (legacy I would like to think) do not support template member functions. So for something in the standard library to rely on a feature that not all compilers will support would be careless. Another is the issue of conversion, and enforcement of concepts on the type T. When you want to ensure that T is default constructable and assignable, and you want to force conversions of objects passed to your function to T, you'd have code that looks like: template <typename TReal> struct polymorphic_conversion_forcer { template <typename TDeduced> void function(TDeduced const & t) { TReal r = t; // TReal should be default constructable and assignable, and TDeduced should be convertible to TReal }; }; I hope this contributes to why ostream_iterator needs the T defined as a class template instead of as a deduced member function. -- Dean Michael C. Berris Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc. [http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com/] [mikhailberis@gmail.com] [+63 928 7291459] [+1 408 4049523]