[c++] Templated check for the existence of a class member function?

Now this was a nice little puzzle - great question!

Here's an alternative to Nicola Bonelli's solution that does not rely on the non-standard typeof operator.

Unfortunately, it does not work on GCC (MinGW) 3.4.5 or Digital Mars 8.42n, but it does work on all versions of MSVC (including VC6) and on Comeau C++.

The longer comment block has the details on how it works (or is supposed to work). As it says, I'm not sure which behavior is standards compliant - I'd welcome commentary on that.

update - 7 Nov 2008:

It looks like while this code is syntactically correct, the behavior that MSVC and Comeau C++ show does not follow the standard (thanks to Leon Timmermans and litb for pointing me in the right direction). The C++03 standard says the following:

14.6.2 Dependent names [temp.dep]

Paragraph 3

In the definition of a class template or a member of a class template, if a base class of the class template depends on a template-parameter, the base class scope is not examined during unqualified name lookup either at the point of definition of the class template or member or during an instantiation of the class template or member.

So, it looks like that when MSVC or Comeau consider the toString() member function of T performing name lookup at the call site in doToString() when the template is instantiated, that is incorrect (even though it's actually the behavior I was looking for in this case).

The behavior of GCC and Digital Mars looks to be correct - in both cases the non-member toString() function is bound to the call.

Rats - I thought I might have found a clever solution, instead I uncovered a couple compiler bugs...

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

struct Hello
{
    std::string toString() {
        return "Hello";
    }
};

struct Generic {};


// the following namespace keeps the toString() method out of
//  most everything - except the other stuff in this
//  compilation unit

namespace {
    std::string toString()
    {
        return "toString not defined";
    }

    template <typename T>
    class optionalToStringImpl : public T
    {
    public:
        std::string doToString() {

            // in theory, the name lookup for this call to 
            //  toString() should find the toString() in 
            //  the base class T if one exists, but if one 
            //  doesn't exist in the base class, it'll 
            //  find the free toString() function in 
            //  the private namespace.
            //
            // This theory works for MSVC (all versions
            //  from VC6 to VC9) and Comeau C++, but
            //  does not work with MinGW 3.4.5 or 
            //  Digital Mars 8.42n
            //
            // I'm honestly not sure what the standard says 
            //  is the correct behavior here - it's sort 
            //  of like ADL (Argument Dependent Lookup - 
            //  also known as Koenig Lookup) but without
            //  arguments (except the implied "this" pointer)

            return toString();
        }
    };
}

template <typename T>
std::string optionalToString(T & obj)
{
    // ugly, hacky cast...
    optionalToStringImpl<T>* temp = reinterpret_cast<optionalToStringImpl<T>*>( &obj);

    return temp->doToString();
}



int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    Hello helloObj;
    Generic genericObj;

    std::cout << optionalToString( helloObj) << std::endl;
    std::cout << optionalToString( genericObj) << std::endl;
    return 0;
}