Thread: What's the cause of this error message?

If the structure is internal to the class you can't use it as a return value, it doesn't matter if the member function is public, private, protected or whatever.

What do you plan to do with this return value? Normally a private member function will only work on either local variables or class member variables. So instead of returning a value, alter a class member variable.

Jim

Originally Posted by Subsonics

Thanks, unfortunately that moved the problem on to other errors like:

error: expected initializer before ‘struct’
error: expected constructor, destructor, or type conversion before ‘->’ token

Are you sure that you did it without any mistake?

This compiles fine.

ABC.h

Code:

#ifndef ABC_H_INCLUDED
#define ABC_H_INCLUDED

#include <cstddef>

template <class T> class ABC {

public:

    struct node_t {
        T data;
        struct node_t *next;
    };

    node_t *new_node(T element);

};


#endif // ABC_H_INCLUDED

.cpp

Code:

#include "ABC.h"

//template <class T>
//typename ABC<T>::node_t *ABC<T>::node_node(T element)
template <class T>
typename ABC<T>::node_t *ABC<T>::new_node(T element) {
    struct node_t *node = new struct node_t;
    node->data = element;
    node->next = NULL;
    return node;
}

int main(void) {
    return 0;
}

Originally Posted by jimblumberg

If the structure is internal to the class you can't use it as a return value, it doesn't matter if the member function is public, private, protected or whatever.

That seems odd, the fact that it's private will prevent it from ever being called from the outside anyway. But, I may end up just returning void*, but as I said creating instances of the struct within the class can be done and is done.

Originally Posted by jimblumberg

What do you plan to do with this return value? Normally a private member function will only work on either local variables or class member variables. So instead of returning a value, alter a class member variable.

Jim

Add it as a part in a linked data structure. The struct is local to the class, I also have class member variables but they are 100% unrelated to this issue.

Originally Posted by fightmx

Are you sure that you did it without any mistake?

This compiles fine.

That's odd, what compiler are you using? I tried to copy/paste what you posted and compiled it:

Code:

g++ paste.cpp

And got these errors:

Code:

paste.cpp:6: error: prototype for ‘typename ABC<T>::node_t* ABC<T>::new_node(T)’ does not match any in class ‘ABC<T>’
ABC.h:16: error: candidate is: void* ABC<T>::new_node(T)
paste.cpp:6: error: template definition of non-template ‘typename ABC<T>::node_t* ABC<T>::new_node(T)’

I tested both using Visual Studio and MinGW (I'm using windows now).