------- Additional Comments From sven at clio dot in-berlin dot de 2005-05-15 17:46 ------- (In reply to comment #6) > > ... Why? > > Because the standard says so, there is no other reason (in other words, there > > is no reason at all). > > I'm sorry, why this attitude? The problem with _any_ ISO standardized programming language is, that they tend to be inconsistence and incomplete because of political decisions of the standardization comitee members (the same appears in C and SQL). Take this problem for example. It is absolutely incomprehensivly that partial specialization is allowed, but full specialization is not (explicit specialzation is a misnomer, any specialization is explicit to some degree). Speculating about the reason, I would say that seven years ago a compiler vendor had problems to implement full specialization (and I would not wonder, if the same vendor implements it as an extension, nowadays). To make matters worse, You have a small chance to influence the comitee without being a member. And becoming a member costs money -- as getting the standard.
-- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21543