------- Comment #11 from H9XLrv5oXVNvHiUI at spambox dot us 2009-12-24 17:23 ------- This is possibly the part in which gets confirmed that the code is standard compliant, although it reports the exact same paragraph you linked (the old version): http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++/tree/browse_frm/thread/493afd501c807ffe/68c709135884bac7?rnum=11&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fcomp.lang.c%2B%2B%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F493afd501c807ffe%3F#doc_38f8441247122dcd
I guess that page is some kind of errata corrige? Anyway maybe I'm missing something but I see that as a conflict. If I recall correctly it is stated that the context of a injected friend function must not be ambiguous, thus meaning you have to declare it first in the correct namespace. The idea of declaration is that you inform the compiler that the function exists somewhere so that you can use it without having it defined yet. If friend function injection is just like defining the function in the parent namespace of the class and if a template exists as a type (at linking level) only when you create an instance of that type, it means the moment you instantiate the template, then the type is defined and consequently the friend function is injected, thus matching with the declaration done before, thus matching with the call that used that declaration. As I pointed in that newsgroup thread, it works fine with normal classes, and theoretically a template is just a class in the second you create an instance of it. I don't precisely understand why there should be an exception for templates. I understand not defining the function if you don't create any instance of the template, but otherwise it's a bit unclear to me why there should be this exception. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=38392
