Hopefully I'll be able to explain this issue. If not, I may just have to post a lot of code. Basically, I've got a base class called 'Log' with virtual methods of writing to a log. I have two descendent classes - ScreenLog and FileLog (with all the same methods). (These methods include writing a std::string to a log, writing a char, a float, a vr_arg, a vector, a list .etc.).

I then have a class called MultiLog (which does not descend from Log), which holds a vector of 'Log *' . When I call writeLog on MultiLog, it iterates through each of the Log * objects inside the vector (which are really ScreenLog and FileLog objects), and calls the respective writeLog function.

My problem is this:

I have 2 functions in both FileLog and ScreenLog, that are templated. They basically call a function in another class that I wrote that will iterate through a vector or list of any type and return a string. This allows me to easily log a vector or list of any kind.
template <class Generic> void writeLog(vector<Generic> & logVector )

{

writeLog ( General::vectorToString( logVector ));

}

template <class Generic> void writeLog(list<Generic> & logList )

{

writeLog ( General::listToString( logList ));

}

The problem is that on Visual studio .net, I am required to add functions on the Log class, otherwise they won't work for MultiLog because it's the Log * that I'm using. however, because the functions are templated, I am unable to create the virtual functions (it complains that template and virtual don't mix). If I don't make them virtual, then instead of calling the appropriate ScreenLog or FileLog functions, it calls the Log one, which doesn't do anything.

The weird thing is, on Sun Studio compiler (solaris), I'm not required to create the functions at all for the Log class, and everything works as designed. (I suspect I'm 'getting lucky' that Sun Studio is letting me get away with something illegal)

Anybody have any ideas on how to make this code work on both compilers?