Question

I have an odd case with Visual Studio 2003. For somewhat legitimate reasons, I have the following hierarchy:

class A {};

class B : public A {
public:
    class A {};
};

class C : public B::A {};

That is, I have an inner class with the same name as a parent of the outer class. When C tries to inherit from B::A, Visual Studio thinks I’m pointing to the parent class A, not the nested class within B. GCC seems to resolve to the inner class version as I expected

Is this a Visual Studio 2003 bug, or am I doing it wrong? Is there a workaround (other than upgrading Visual Studio)?

Answer 1

Yes, this looks like VS2003 bug. Workaround is simple – use typedef, it works this way:

class A { public: int x; };
class B : public A { public: class A { public: int y; }; }; 

typedef B::A BA;

class C: public BA {};

void f()
{
   C cc;
   cc.y = 0;
}