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From: "Risto Lankinen" <rlankine@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: Proposal: two real uses for the "auto" keyword
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References: <052201c0b4ab$603e8050$0500a8c0@dragonsys.com> <99l3nf$7n0$1@news-int.gatech.edu> <+zJqQ9Afowv6Ews1@ntlworld.com> <3ABF4E68.14646D4E@acm.org>
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Approved: Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>, moderator of comp.std.c++
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 12:49:48 CST
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Xref: supernews.google.com comp.std.c++:4029

Hi!

James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org> wrote in message
news:3ABF4E68.14646D4E@acm.org...
> Francis Glassborow wrote:
> >
> > In article <99l3nf$7n0$1@news-int.gatech.edu>, Brian McNamara!
> > <gt5163b@prism.gatech.edu> writes
> > >(As an aside, I am curious why function declarations are even allowed
> > >inside functions.)
> >
> > Almost certainly for compatibility with C.
>
> Would it be sensible to consider deprecating this feature,
> or removing it altogether?  It seems to give no significant
> benefit, and plenty of pain.

The "benefit" is the ability to do overloaded function
selection in a local scope, by utilizing the name hiding
phenomenon.  For example, the program...

void f(int);
void f(bool);

void main()
{
  void f(bool);

  f(1);
  f(false);
}

... changes its behaviour when the declaration inside
the main()'s function block is removed.

Cheers!

 - Risto -



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