Defect Report #164
Submission Date: 16 Oct 95
Submittor: BSI
Source: Clive D.W. Feather
Question
Submitted to BSI by Clive D.W. Feather clive@sco.com .
In this Defect Report, identifiers lexically identical to those
declared in standard headers refer to the identifiers declared in those
standard headers, whether or not the header is explicitly mentioned.
This Defect Report has been prepared with considerable help from
Mark Brader, Jutta Degener, Ronald Guilmette, and a person whose
employment conditions require anonymity. However, except where stated,
opinions expressed or implied should not be assumed to be those of any
person other than myself.
Defect Report UK 012: Bad declarations
The C Standard contains no constraint to prevent declarations
involving types not defined by subclause 6.1.2.5.
Subclause 6.5 states that:
A declaration shall declare at least a declarator, a tag, or the
members of an enumeration. There seems to be no constraint that a
declarator generate a well-formed type. Consider the following code:
{
int a [][5]; /* Line A */
int x, b [][5]; /* Line B */
}
Neither a nor b has a
well formed type. Does line A nevertheless
declare a declarator, or does it violate the quoted constraint?
If it violates the constraint, does line B?
Is it the intent of the C Standard that an ill-formed (but
syntactically correct) type generate a diagnostic? If so, then is there
one, or does one need to be added?
Response
Line A declares a declarator. It violates the semantics described
in subclause 6.5:
If an identifier for an object is declared with no linkage, the
type for the object shall be complete by the end of its declarator, ...
But no diagnostic is required.
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