[c++] expected constructor, destructor, or type conversion before ‘(’ token

Compiling polygone.h and polygone.cc gives error:

polygone.cc:5:19: error: expected constructor, destructor, or type conversion before ‘(’ token

Code:

//polygone.h
# if !defined(__POLYGONE_H__)
# define __POLYGONE_H__

# include <iostream>

class Polygone {

    public:
        Polygone(){};
        Polygone(std::string fichier);

};

# endif

and

//polygone.cc
# include <iostream>
# include <fstream>
# include "polygone.h"

Polygone::Polygone(string nom)
{
    std::ifstream fichier (nom, ios::in);
    std::string line;

    if (fichier.is_open())
    {
        while ( fichier.good() )
        {
            getline (fichier, line);
            std::cout << line << std::endl;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        std::cerr << "Erreur a l'ouverture du fichier" << std::endl;
    }
}

//ifstream fich1 (argv[1], ios::in);

My guess is that the compiler is not recognising Polygone::Polygone(string nom) as a constructor, but, if this actually is the case, I have no idea why.

Any help?

You are missing the std namespace reference in the cc file. You should also call nom.c_str() because there is no implicit conversion from std::string to const char * expected by ifstream's constructor.

Polygone::Polygone(std::string nom) {
    std::ifstream fichier (nom.c_str(), std::ifstream::in);
    // ...
}

This is not only a 'newbie' scenario. I just ran across this compiler message (GCC 5.4) when refactoring a class to remove some constructor parameters. I forgot to update both the declaration and definition, and the compiler spit out this unintuitive error.

The bottom line seems to be this: If the compiler can't match the definition's signature to the declaration's signature it thinks the definition is not a constructor and then doesn't know how to parse the code and displays this error. Which is also what happened for the OP: std::string is not the same type as string so the declaration's signature differed from the definition's and this message was spit out.

As a side note, it would be nice if the compiler looked for almost-matching constructor signatures and upon finding one suggested that the parameters didn't match rather than giving this message.