This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 115e. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-11-11

522. Array-to-pointer decay in template argument deduction

[Voted into WP at the October, 2006 meeting.]

Consider the following example:

    char* cmdline3_[1] = {};

    template<class charT>
    void func(const charT* const argv[]) {}

    int main()
    {
        func(cmdline3_);
    }

In terms of the process described in 13.10.3.2 [temp.deduct.call], P is const charT* const * and A is char*[1]. According to the first bullet in paragraph 2, the type used in deduction is not A but “the pointer type produced by the array-to-pointer standard conversion.”

According to paragraph 4,

In general, the deduction process attempts to find template argument values that will make the deduced A identical to A (after the type A is transformed as described above). However, there are three cases that allow a difference:

In this example, the deduced A is not identical to the transformed A, because the deduced A has additional cv-qualification, so the three exceptions must be examined to see if they apply. The only one that might apply is the second bullet of paragraph 4:

• A can be another pointer or pointer to member type that can be converted to the deduced A via a qualification conversion (7.3.6 [conv.qual]).

However, A is not a pointer type but an array type; this provision does not apply and deduction fails.

It has been argued that the phrase “after the type A is transformed as described above” should be understood to apply to the A in the three bullets of paragraph 4. If that is the intent, the wording should be changed to make that explicit.

Proposed resolution (October, 2005):

Add the indicated words to 13.10.3.2 [temp.deduct.call] paragraph 4:

In general, the deduction process attempts to find template argument values that will make the deduced A identical to A (after the type A is transformed as described above). However, there are three cases that allow a difference:

• If the original P is a reference type, the deduced A (i.e., the type referred to by the reference) can be more cv-qualified than the transformed A.

• The transformed A can be another pointer or pointer to member type that can be converted to the deduced A via a qualification conversion (7.3.6 [conv.qual]).

• If P is a class, and P has the form template-id, then the transformed A can be a derived class of the deduced A. Likewise, if P is a pointer to a class of the form template-id, the transformed A can be a pointer to a derived class pointed to by the deduced A.