Tolua++, functions can’t return [type]*&

Hello,

I know this isn’t directly related to Urho3D but since tolua++ has no community, information about it is sparse and is contained as a third party tool I figured maybe someone here knows how to fix my problem.

So the issue is following: I am binding std::vector (Urho3D::Vector would have the same issue) with a bunch of classes. For normal types and objects this works, but for a reason I don’t understand binding pointer types is not allowed as the return value of some methods would then be [type]*&.

E.g. my .pkg binding file is this:

$using namespace std;
typedef int					size_type;

class vector
{
	TOLUA_TEMPLATE_BIND(T, 	int, string, double, int*)

	size_type size();
	size_type max_size();
	size_type capacity();

	bool empty();

	void reserve(size_type __n);
	void clear();

	T& operator[](size_type __n);

	T& front();
	T& back();

	void push_back(T __x);
	void pop_back();
};

When trying to generate the bindings with tolua++ I then get the following error:

**curr code for error is int& front();

stack traceback:
[string “tolua embedded: lua/basic.lua”]:57: in function ‘tolua_error’
[string “tolua: embedded Lua code 23”]:5: in main chunk

** tolua internal error: [string “tolua embedded: lua/declaration.lua”]:368: #invalid function return type: int*& front.

stack traceback:
[string “tolua: embedded Lua code 23”]:6: in main chunk

Now I’m kind of wondering why that is. Returning a reference to a pointer should be perfectly valid?

With a bit of digging I found the lines responsible here:

Although I can’t seem to adjust anything in this file, I’ve made a fresh Urho3D repository, commented out that line and built everything but for some reason that error still keeps appearing - that part seems to be cached somewhere regardless of a fresh install?

Anyone have an idea why?