🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10190@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <2402@lethe.UUCP> dave@lethe.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown) writes:
>>[why are repeated typedefs illegal?]
>
>Well, consider how the compiler is going to parse a complex declaration
>containing several typedefs.  How does it know whether you are defining the
>same typedef a second time or are just using it to help typedef something
>else?

It seems to me that the compiler is going to have to be able to handle such a
case anyway.  Note that
	typedef int foo;
	void f(void) {
	    typedef int foo;
	}
*is* legal (and would be even if the two types didn't match; the second simply
hides the first until end-of-scope).  At the point of the second declaration,
the compiler has to be prepared for both a redeclaration of foo and a new
declaration using foo.  Given a compiler that can parse this, it would seem
that the extra effort to handle the desired feature would be negligible.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint