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Declaring template function friends involves some incredibly unintuitive syntax, even for C++! What is the rationale behind the choice of syntax for the extra <> needed? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the template keyword? For those that don't know about this, here is an example of what you might try to do: template <typename T> class Foo { int x; friend void bar(Foo<T>); }; template <typename T> void bar(Foo<T> f) { std::cout << f.x; } If you try to call bar(Foo<T>()) , you will get linker errors. To solve this, you have to forward declare bar (and therefore Foo ) and then stick an oddly placed <> in the friend declaration. template <typename T> class Foo; template <typename T> void bar(Foo<T>); template <typename T> class Foo { int x; friend void bar<>(Foo<T>); // note the <> (!?) }; template <typename T> void bar(Foo<T> f) { std::cout << f.x; } My question is, what is the rationale behind the <> syntax? Wouldn't it be more intuitive to use the template keyword or something along those lines? EDIT: To clarify, I already know why the <> is required, what I want to know is why they chose to use <> to disambiguate it instead of some other more intuitive syntax.

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