There was a change, in fact. It’s documented in the compatibility section of the C++20 draft.
[diff.cpp17.class]
2 Affected subclauses: [class.ctor] and [class.dtor]
Change: A simple-template-id is no longer valid as the declarator-id of a constructor or destructor.
Rationale: Remove potentially error-prone option for redundancy.
Effect on original feature: Valid C++ 2017 code may fail to compile in this International Standard. For example:template<class T> struct A { A<T>(); // error: simple-template-id not allowed for constructor A(int); // OK, injected-class-name used ~A<T>(); // error: simple-template-id not allowed for destructor };
Specifically, the wording delta is this:
n4659 – C++17 standard draft – [class.ctor]
1 Constructors do not have names. In a declaration of a constructor,
the declarator is a function declarator of the formptr-declarator ( parameter-declaration-clause ) noexcept-specifier attribute-specifier-seq
where the ptr-declarator consists solely of an id-expression, an optional attribute-specifier-seq, and optional surrounding parentheses, and the id-expression has one of the following forms:
- in a member-declaration that belongs to the member-specification of a class but is not a friend declaration, the id-expression is the injected-class-name of the immediately-enclosing class;
- in a member-declaration that belongs to the member-specification of a class template but is not a friend declaration, the id-expression is
a class-name that names the current instantiation of the
immediately-enclosing class template; orn4861 – C++20 standard draft – [class.ctor]
1 A constructor is introduced by a declaration whose declarator is a
function declarator ([dcl.fct]) of the formptr-declarator ( parameter-declaration-clause ) noexcept-specifier attribute-specifier-seq
where the ptr-declarator consists solely of an id-expression, an
optional attribute-specifier-seq, and optional surrounding
parentheses, and the id-expression has one of the following forms:
- in a member-declaration that belongs to the member-specification of a class or class template but is not a friend declaration
([class.friend]), the id-expression is the injected-class-name
([class.pre]) of the immediately-enclosing entity or
As you can see, the wording changed. C++20 now requires the injected class name when declaring a constructor for a class template. S<T>
is a simple template id that names a specialization. Inside a template, the injected class name is simply S
.
This is part of addressing CWG 2237.