apropos.el/hyper-apropos.el hate C++[1]. This has never worked right,
but earlier XEmacsen didn't puke quite this badly.
Repeat by:
$ xemacs -vanilla
M-x apropos ^c++
[BEEP]Invalid regexp: "Invalid preceding regular expression"
M-x hyper-apropos ^c++
[BEEP]Invalid regexp: "Invalid preceding regular expression"
Footnotes:
[1] Or maybe they just have good taste in Computer Languages? :-)