"template" disambiguator is c++11. Any chance for VS2008 compiler?

Question

A few weeks ago I posted this question about a weird error message. The culprit was incorrect parsing of the < token, a problem solved through the use of the "template" disambiguator keyword.

We found an unexpected ugly surprise though. The template disambiguator is c++11, but we need to support VS2008, and it does not support it. So we basically went from something that compiles on windows but not on linux, to something that compiles on linux but not on windows.

Do you have any idea how to solve? Specifically

• is there a magic option in the windows compiler to enable this c++11 construct, or
• there's an alternative way within the old c++ standard to solve that ambiguity that is also cross compiler, or
• if we need to use preprocessor, what are the preprocessor constants (if any) to distinguish the two compilers (gcc is the other one)

Answer 1

The template disabiguator has been part of C++ since C++98. It was introduced when two phase lookup was introduced, along with typename.