Question

I met an error complaining: error: expected initializer before ‘:’ token

SO I went to check the code, it has some lines as below,

class VTK_IO_EXPORT vtkPFReader
:
    public vtkMultiBlockDataSetAlgorithm
{blahblah...}

I want to know in defining class VTK_IO_EXPORT vtkPFReader, what does the first name VTK_IO_EXPORT mean? I found that if I delete the VTK_IO_EXPORT, then no error occurs, but some other error happens. What should I do? Thanks a lot

Answer 1

VTK_IO_EXPORT is a preprocessor macro. It is blank on all platforms other that Windows.

On Windows, VTK_IO_EXPORT is defined as __declspec( dllexport ) or __declspec( dllimport ), both of which are non-standard Microsoft extensions.

The fact that you’re getting the error, and that removing VTK_IO_EXPORT fixes it, suggests that for some reason you have WIN32 defined even though you’re building on Linux. You need to figure out why this is happening.