Issue with pointer redirection in inherited clauses

[John Fine]

Tyler Earman wrote:
> "I have noticed that when (this is C++) inheriting a templatized derived
> class from a templatized base that in g++, references to elements of the
> base class have to be qualified with this-> or with the name of the base
> class put in front.  But this is NOT needed in the Windows C++ compilers
> so far as I can see. 
>   
GCC is doing the correct thing according to the C++ standard.  I 
personally think the C++ standard is bad and this feature makes C++ a 
worse language than it was before compilers enforced this language behavior.

When coding to work around this problem, I find both this->name and 
base_class::name are ugly constructs.  I don't use either to work around 
this problem.  Instead I use using directives, such as:

template <class X>
class my_container : public std::vector<X>
{
    typedef std::vector<X> super;
    using super::size;
    using super::empty;
    typedef typename super::iterator iterator;

At the start of most classes, I typedef the major base class as "super" 
(not directly relevant to the current issue, but it helps).
Then I have the appropriate using super:: declarations to identify all 
the function and variable names from that super class which will be used 
bare in the current class.  You can't use using declarations for types 
from the base class, so those are best done with the typedef typename 
construct.