Question

I’m code reviewing a colleagues code and found this:

Header file:

template<class T>
class MyClass
{
  void Execute();
}

Cpp file:

void MyClass<int>::Execute()
{
  // something
}

void MyClass<string>::Execute()
{
  // something else
}

The code is specializing the function, but without using template specialization syntax. I guess it’s working ok, but is it valid?

Answer 1

This is the old syntax for explicit specialization. But I’m surprised that you are using a compiler which still accept it (g++ stopped around 4.0). To be conforming you need to prefix the specialization with template <>.