Question

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C++ Inherited template classes don't have access to the base class

I’m experiencing problems with templates and inheritance. Simply, I have a template class which I want another template class to inherit from. I don’t understand why members of base class are not visible within deriving class? Though without using templates everything works as expected. For example:

template <typename T>
class Foo
{
public:
    T x;
    T y;
    void doX(){ x = x+1; }
    void doY(){y++;}
protected:
    T a;
    T b;
    void doA(){a++;}
};

template <typename T>
class Bar : public Foo<T>
{
public:
    void doX(){x++; y++;} // ERROR
    void doY(){x++; y++;} // ERROR
    void doA(){a++;b++;}  // ERROR
};

Answer 1

These variables are dependent names (read The Dreaded Two-Phase Name Lookup for details), so you need to use this as:

void doX(){ this->x++; this->y++; } 

Usually this-> is not required as it is implicit. But here it is required. Actually explicit this-> tells the compiler to look up the name in the second phase when the base class is instantiated, as this case uses two-phase name lookup mechanism.

Or you could qualify them with base class as:

template <typename T>
class Bar : public Foo<T>
{
    typedef Foo<T> base; //add this friendly typedef!
public:
    void doX(){  base::x++; base::y++;} 
    //...
};

In this case, the fact that the names cannot be looked-up untill base (which is a typedef of Foo<T>) is instantiated, becomes more obvious (to humans eyes) in my opinion.