Qsort problems on Solaris 10 with Forte 6.0u2

Question

All,
I know the Forte version is a bit behind - but I'm stuck with it.
I'm trying to port some software we have working on Solaris 2.6 thru Solaris 9 over to Solaris 10, but am having some trouble linking my executable due to the extern "C++" declaration of qsort in /usr/include/iso/stdlib_iso.h.
The problem is easily visible with a simple test program.
#include <stdlib.h>
int comp(const void pv1, const void pv2)
return 1;
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
int iArray[20];
std::qsort((void *)&iArray[0],
sizeof(iArray)/sizeof(iArray[0]),
sizeof(iArray[0]),
comp);
return 0;
Yes it's non-functional, but it's sufficient for displaying my problem.
If I compile with the C compiler (cc) it compiles clean - however when I compile with the C++ compiler (CC).....
[tony@sol10]:~/export:29 % CC -o testqsort testqsort.c
Undefined first referenced
symbol in file
void std::qsort(void*,unsigned,unsigned,int(*)(const void*,const void*)) testqsort.o
ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to testqsort
Now it's obvious to me that the problem is due to the fact that under the C++ compiler qsort is now (under Solaris 10) getting declared as extern "C++", but I'm not sure how I can resolve this. I know that qsort is implemented in libc, but this obviously isn't sufficient due to the shift of namespace. Yes, I need to use the C++ compiler as my code is C++, only my test code is valid C.
Can anybody lend some assistance? Is there just another lib I need to link to? I'm expecting this to be something basic that I'll be embarrassed about when it's pointed out. But for now I'm stumped. Running nm across all my libs yielded no implementation apart from in libc.so.
Thanks in advance
Tony

Answer 1

Standard C++ defines two versions of qsort (and also bsearch): one that takes a pointer to a C function, and one that takes a pointer to a C++ function.
Recall that in standard C++, a pointer to a C function has a different type than a pointer to a C++ function. This issue is discussed at length in the C++ Migration Guide that comes with the compiler.
The version of qsort that takes a pointer to a C function is the C version of qsort, and is in libc.so (the basic Solaris runtime library that all programs use).
The version of qsort that takes a pointer to a C++ function is in the C++ runtime library libCrun.so that all C++ programs use.
But because it took a while for Solaris headers to be updated to the C++ requirement, early versions of libCrun did not have the C++ version of qsort (or bsearch). If you get the latest C++ runtime library patch (SUNWlibC) for your system, your program should link. You can get patches here:
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/downloads/patches/index.html
Not only the system where you build the program needs updating, but every system that runs the program you build.
Alternatively, you can declare the comparison function extern "C" so that the C version of qsort will be used.
extern "C"
int comp(const void pv1, const void pv2)
But if the comparison function is in a namespace or is a class member function, you cannot usefully declare it extern "C".