Question

I have a template class which implements function:

template<typename T>
class Matrix
{
...
void setItems(const T *tab)
{
    //writing content from tab to Matrix internal data 
}
...
};

Everything’s fine until I want to create specialized function for char*, my class must allocate memory for string and so on. I wanted to use:

template<> void Matrix<char*>::setItems(const char** tab)
{
...

The problem is, this does not build:

template-id 'setItems<>' for 'void Matrix<char*>::setItems(const char**)' does not match any template declaration

I had no problem with specialized functions until now. What am I missing?

Additional info:
I must use char*

Answer 1

If T is a char *, then const T * is a char *const *.

So your member function should be:

template<> void Matrix<char*>::setItems(char*const* tab)
{
  ...
}

It is fairly common to put the const after the type

void setItems(T const* tab)

which makes it a little more obvious what the expanded type is in your case.