Bogus error message? (covariant return types)

[Omar Loggiodice <ologgio at vrainn dot com>]

Hi folks,

   First, let me say again (this time in public) that the egcs team has
done a tremendous job with egcs. Thanks for your persistance and for the
good job you're doing.

Now to the potential bug. If I compile the following code with egcs-1.0
(plus H.J. patches for RedHat 5.0) I get an error message saying:

covariant-bug1.cc:26: sorry, not implemented:
adjusting pointers for covariant returns   

However, if I change the order of the base classes the code compiles and
runs perfectly. 

Here is the code that shows the bug:

#include <iostream.h>

class A
{
   public:
   virtual A* who()
   {
      cout << "I'm A" << endl;
      return this;
   }                
};

class B
{
};

// If we switch the order of the base classes egcs-1.0 doesn't
// have any problem with the covariant return type
class C:public B,public A
{
   virtual C* who()
   {
      cout << "I'm C" << endl;
      return this;
   }                 
};

void main()
{
   A* ap;
   A a;
   C c;

   ap = &a;
   ap->who();
   ap = &c;
   ap->who();
}

Here is the workaround:

1:26pm  linda
~/tmp --> diff -u covariant-bug1.cc covariant-bug1-workaround.cc
--- covariant-bug1.cc   Thu Dec 18 13:24:41 1997
+++ covariant-bug1-workaround.cc        Thu Dec 18 13:25:16 1997
@@ -14,9 +14,9 @@
 {
 };

-// If we switch the order of the base classes egcs-1.0 doesn't
-// have any problem with the covariant return type
-class C:public B,public A
+// After switching the order of the base classes egcs-1.0 doesn't
+// have any problem compiling this code
+class C:public A,public B
 {
    virtual C* who()
    {

And everything works fine using the workaround:

~/tmp --> g++ covariant-bug1-workaround.cc
1:27pm  linda
~/tmp --> ./a.out
I'm A
I'm C
1:27pm  linda
~/tmp -->               

Here's the output of g++ -v:
~/tmp --> g++ -v
Reading specs from
/usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-linux-gnu/egcs-2.90.21/specs
gcc version egcs-2.90.21 971202 (egcs-1.00 release)


____________________________________________________________________
            /   __  __  __  - __  __ / - _  __  ologgio@vrainn.com
  Omar R.  /__ /_/ /_/ /_/ / /_/ /_/ / /_  /-_  CIS: 74040,1543
                  __/ __/                         
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