Breaking change - OnNcHitTest

Breaking change - OnNcHitTest

September 16th, 2005 · 12 Comments

Alright, this is a really bad one. This line of code :-

ON_WM_NCHITTEST()

- which was compiling quite okay in VC++ 6 (and VC++ 7.1) suddenly throws this strange error message.

error C2440: 'static_cast' : cannot convert from 'UINT (__thiscall CPocket::* )(CPoint)' to 'LRESULT (__thiscall CWnd::* )(CPoint)'

And it also has a suggestion to fix the error that is even more confusing :-

Cast from base to derived requires dynamic_cast or static_cast

We are already using static_cast, aren't we?

Guess what? The return type for OnNcHitTest has been changed from UINT to LRESULT (only in the MFC source, the MSDN documentation still says UINT as of Beta 2) to accommodate for negative return values. Crappy part is that this was wizard generated code - we didn't even write it, damnit! The fix is to change UINT to LRESULT - though if you want to compile the same code for VC++ 6 and 7.1, you'd want to do what I did :-

//In header file

#if _MSC_VER >= 1400
	afx_msg LRESULT OnNcHitTest(CPoint point);
#else
	afx_msg UINT OnNcHitTest(CPoint point);
#endif	

//In cpp file

#if _MSC_VER >= 1400
	LRESULT CPocket::OnNcHitTest(CPoint point)
#else
	UINT CPocket::OnNcHitTest(CPoint point)
#endif
{
#if _MSC_VER >= 1400
	LRESULT nRet=CButton::OnNcHitTest(point);
#else
	UINT nRet=CButton::OnNcHitTest(point);
#endif
//...

Took me a while to figure that one out! It's not even listed in the Breaking Changes page! :grrr:

Tags: C++ · VC++ 2005

12 responses so far ↓

• 1 Alok // Sep 21, 2005 at 5:25 am

  Same condition apply for widly use ON_MESSAGE macro too..

• 2 Indranil Datta // Sep 30, 2005 at 1:41 pm

  Hi,
  I am quite sure that you are right in this matter and the blog is excellent. I should not
  be ashemed that I don't know why if _MSC_VER >= 1400 ?? :->
  If you can elaborate on this, I will be happy.

• 3 Scherbina Vladimir // Nov 5, 2005 at 9:39 pm

  Indranil, _MSC_VER defines the compiler version, so Nish just decided to change function prototype (CButton::OnNcHitTest) for a Beta2 compiler by using #if #else #endif statements.