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

474. Block-scope extern declarations in namespace members

[Voted into WP at October 2005 meeting.]

Consider the following bit of code:

    namespace N {
      struct S {
        void f();
      };
    }
    using namespace N;
    void S::f() {
      extern void g();  // ::g or N::g?
    }

In 6.6 [basic.link] paragraph 7 the Standard says (among other things),

When a block scope declaration of an entity with linkage is not found to refer to some other declaration, then that entity is a member of the innermost enclosing namespace.

The question then is whether N is an “enclosing namespace” for the local declaration of g()?

Proposed resolution (October 2004):

Add the following text as a new paragraph at the end of 9.8.2 [namespace.def]:

The enclosing namespaces of a declaration are those namespaces in which the declaration lexically appears, except for a redeclaration of a namespace member outside its original namespace (e.g., a definition as specified in _N4868_.9.8.2.3 [namespace.memdef]). Such a redeclaration has the same enclosing namespaces as the original declaration. [Example:

  namespace Q {
    namespace V {
      void f(); // enclosing namespaces are the global namespace, Q, and Q::V
      class C { void m(); };
    }
    void V::f() { // enclosing namespaces are the global namespace, Q, and Q::V
      extern void h(); // ... so this declares Q::V::h
    }
    void V::C::m() { // enclosing namespaces are the global namespace, Q, and Q::V
    }
  }

—end example]