What feature of C++ lets template classes refer to themselves without template arguments?

Question

Given:

template <typename T>
class C {
    C & operator ++ () { ... }
};

Why/how is C allowed to declare variables and functions of type C rather than being required to name C<T>? I had not really thought about it before working on a template with many parameters that would make spelling out the "self type" inconvenient.

Are there any quirks of this I should know about?

Answer 1

[n3290: 14.6.1/1]: Like normal (non-template) classes, class templates have an injected-class-name (Clause 9). The injected-class-name can be used as a template-name or a type-name. When it is used with a template-argument-list, as a template-argument for a template template-parameter, or as the final identifier in the elaborated-type-specifier of a friend class template declaration, it refers to the class template itself. Otherwise, it is equivalent to the template-name followed by the template-parameters of the class template enclosed in <>.

Ostensibly, it's merely a convenience feature.

Answer 2

It's just syntactic sugar.

It is convenient to not have to change the signatures of your methods if you have to change the template parameters.