CWG Issue 191

This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 116a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-12-19

191. Name lookup does not handle complex nesting

Section: 6.5.3 [basic.lookup.unqual] Status: CD6 Submitter: Alan Nash Date: 29 Dec 1999

[Accepted at the November, 2020 meeting as part of paper P1787R6 and moved to DR at the February, 2021 meeting.]

The current description of unqualified name lookup in 6.5.3 [basic.lookup.unqual] paragraph 8 does not correctly handle complex cases of nesting. The Standard currently reads,

A name used in the definition of a function that is a member function (9.3) of a class X shall be declared in one of the following ways:

before its use in the block in which it is used or in an enclosing block (6.3), or

shall be a member of class X or be a member of a base class of X (10.2), or

if X is a nested class of class Y (9.7), shall be a member of Y, or shall be a member of a base class of Y (this lookup applies in turn to Y's enclosing classes, starting with the innermost enclosing class), or

if X is a local class (9.8) or is a nested class of a local class, before the definition of class X in a block enclosing the definition of class X, or

if X is a member of namespace N, or is a nested class of a class that is a member of N, or is a local class or nested class within a local class of a function that is a member of N, before the member function definition, in namespace N or in one of N's enclosing namespaces.

In particular, this formulation does not handle the following example:

    struct outer {
        static int i;
        struct inner {
            void f() {
                struct local {
                    void g() {
                        i = 5;
                    }
                };
            }
        };
    };

Here the reference to i is from a member function of a local class of a member function of a nested class. Nothing in the rules allows outer::i to be found, although intuitively it should be found.

A more comprehensive formulation is needed that allows traversal of any combination of blocks, local classes, and nested classes. Similarly, the final bullet needs to be augmented so that a function need not be a (direct) member of a namespace to allow searching that namespace when the reference is from a member function of a class local to that function. That is, the current rules do not allow the following example:

    int j;    // global namespace
    struct S {
        void f() {
            struct local2 {
                void g() {
                    j = 5;
                }
            };
        }
    };