Illegal token on right side of ::

I have the following template declaration:

template <typename T>
   void IterTable(int&                       rIdx,
                  std::vector<double>&       rVarVector,
                  const std::vector<T>&      aTable,
                  const T                    aValue,
				  T              aLowerBound = -(std::numeric_limits<T>::max()), //illegal token on right side of '::' shows here
                  bool                       aLeftOpen = true) const;

Which throws the illegal token error as noted, on the line with "-(std::numeric_limits::max())". I got this code from some old linux source that I'm trying to compile on Windows. Any idea what the issue is?

Edit: It also fails using min(), and the compiler output is:

Error	92	error C2589: '::' : illegal token on right side of '::'	c:\projects\r&d\prepaydll\include\cfcdefault.h	216	PrepayDLL

Error	93	error C2059: syntax error : '::'	c:\projects\r&d\prepaydll\include\cfcdefault.h	216	PrepayDLL

Line 216, is the line previously mentioned.

My guess is that max has been made a macro. This happens at some point inside windows.h.

Define NOMINMAX prior to including to stop windows.h from doing that.

EDIT:

I'm still confident this is your problem. (Not including <limits> would result in a different error). Place #undef max and #undef min just before the function and try again. If that fixes it, I was correct, and your NOMINMAX isn't being defined properly. (Add it as a project setting.)

You can also prevent macro expansion by: (std::numeric_limits<T>::max)().

---

On a side note, why not do std::numeric_limits<T>::min() instead of negating the max?

Looks like you need to:

#include <limits>

I wrote a "test harness" with a trivial struct containing your method declaration (and nothing else), and #included <limits> and <vector>, and invoked (and thus instantiated) the method with T being int, and it compiled just fine, both on Visual Studio 2008 Express on Windows Vista and with GCC 4.2.4 on Linux 2.6.

I suggest trying to build only a minimal amount of code with the "problem" in it, and if that actually does build, add back in the rest of your project until it breaks, then you'll know what caused it.