Manipulator error

Try breaking the return into two lines:

std::ofstream& CLogFile::endl (std::ofstream &out) {
  out << " ";
  return out;
}
 

To expand on that (assuming I do actually understand what''s going on):

ofstream is-a ostream. The operator<< on ofstream returns *this, but returns it as a more general ostream&, in accordance with some people''s ideas about good OO practice (don''t tell people more than they need to know about the returned object). So breaking the statement into two lines will do the trick (you throw the returned *this value on the floor, and do the return yourself, as an ofstream); casting should as well (but is probably a Bad Idea(TM)); as should just returning an ostream& yourself (why not follow the library designers'' lead?).

quote:

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Original post by Zahlman
but returns it as a more general ostream&, in accordance with some people''s ideas about good OO practice (don''t tell people more than they need to know about the returned object).

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Not all overloads of operator<< on std::basic_ostream are defined to return *this. For example, std::basic_ostream & std::basic_ostream<<(std:basic_ostream & (*pf)(std::basic_ostream &)) is defined to return pf(*this), which may not even be the original stream. Therefore, it is impossible to define operator<< to have covariant returns for all overloads. It doesn''t really have anything to do with minimizing type information on return types, but more to do with orthogonality in interface.