Question

Why does this give the error: Test::Test: no overloaded function takes 2 arguments

class Test
{
public:
    Test(const std::vector<int>&)
    {
    }
};

Test test(boost::assign::list_of(4));

Answer 1

The implementation of boost::assign::list_of requires the container type, in this case your Test class, to have a two argument constructor that takes a first and last iterator (aka range) to initialize the container with.

Specifically, the error comes from the line below with return Container in the convert metho of the boost::assign_detail::converter class:

    template< class Container >
    Container convert( const Container*, default_type_tag ) const
    {
        return Container( begin(), end() );
    }

The reason hmjd’s workaround is successful is that std::vector has a constructor takes two iterators.