This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 114a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-04-18


157. Omitted typedef declarator

Section: 9.1  [dcl.pre]     Status: open     Submitter: Daveed Vandevoorde     Date: 19 Aug 1999

9.1 [dcl.pre] paragraph 3 reads,

In a simple-declaration, the optional init-declarator-list can be omitted only when... the decl-specifier-seq contains either a class-specifier, an elaborated-type-specifier with a class-key (11.3 [class.name] ), or an enum-specifier. In these cases and whenever a class-specifier or enum-specifier is present in the decl-specifier-seq, the identifiers in those specifiers are among the names being declared by the declaration... In such cases, and except for the declaration of an unnamed bit-field (11.4.10 [class.bit] ), the decl-specifier-seq shall introduce one or more names into the program, or shall redeclare a name introduced by a previous declaration. [Example:
    enum { };           // ill-formed
    typedef class { };  // ill-formed
—end example]
In the absence of any explicit restrictions in 9.2.4 [dcl.typedef] , this paragraph appears to allow declarations like the following:
    typedef struct S { };    // no declarator
    typedef enum { e1 };     // no declarator
In fact, the final example in 9.1 [dcl.pre] paragraph 3 would seem to indicate that this is intentional: since it is illustrating the requirement that the decl-specifier-seq must introduce a name in declarations in which the init-declarator-list is omitted, presumably the addition of a class name would have made the example well-formed.

On the other hand, there is no good reason to allow such declarations; the only reasonable scenario in which they might occur is a mistake on the programmer's part, and it would be a service to the programmer to require that such errors be diagnosed.