I commited the fix for 1358600 - lexical_cast & pure virtual functions & VC 8 STL (http://tinyurl.com/yvowz6) for VC++ only but later I found that Intel 8.1 and Comeau online don't compile as well. The problem appears in numeric_limits functions. In this usecase, they return an abstract class by value. Although lexical_cast never uses those functions, it seems that some compilers do more strick checking than I thought they should. For example, class A { public: virtual void foo() = 0; }; template<class T> struct limits { static int const value = true; static T declared_only(); }; int main() { limits<A>::value; } fails to compile on VC++ 8, Intel 8.1 and Comeau online at the point of the declared_only declaration. However, if I replace a body of A with a declaration (class A;), those compilers don't complain anymore. What is this, a compiler bug or my misunderstanding? I remember that some freedom compiling template code is allowed (and therefore, some compiler compiles while some others don't) but I don't know where to search in the standard. -- Alexander Nasonov http://nasonov.blogspot.com The wise man does at once what the fool does finally. -- Baltasar Gracian -- This quote is generated by: /usr/pkg/bin/curl -L http://tinyurl.com/veusy \ | sed -e 's/^document\.write(.//' -e 's/.);$/ --/' \ -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' -e 's/^More quotes from //' \ | fmt | tee ~/.signature-quote