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From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Why are typedef names in the same name space as variable names?
Message-ID: <625@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Nov-86 17:22:23 EST
Article-I.D.: hadron.625
Posted: Sun Nov 23 17:22:23 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Nov-86 21:53:03 EST
References: <1092@spice.cs.cmu.edu> <307@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Distribution: net
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 33
Summary: Objection to objection.

In article <307@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> ballou@brahms (Kenneth R. Ballou) writes:
>In article <1092@spice.cs.cmu.edu> jgm@spice.cs.cmu.edu (John Myers) writes:
>>In article <4220@ut-ngp.UUCP> dlnash@ut-ngp.UUCP (Donald L. Nash) writes:
>>>Why are typedef names in the same name space as variable names?...
>>#include <stdio.h>
>>main()
>>{
>>    typedef car foo;
>>    long foo;
>>    printf("%d\n",sizeof(foo));
>>}
>I don't see that there is a question here.  Sizeof is *NOT* a function, as was
>quite thoroughly discussed some time back in this group.  Note that (foo) in
>this case is the syntax of a type cast, and in this case, sizeof returns 
>the size of a datum of type foo (in this case, 1).

(foo) is also an expression.  If the typedef were not present, this
would still be a legal C program, with an unambiguous compilation:
the size of the long int "foo" would be printed out.  As it is, I
believe either interpretation is "correct".

Thus, purely BTW, this can be considered a bad program -- I think
it's not a good idea to use a name for more than one purpose, when
a less ambiguous way of doing the same thing can be found.

As I mentioned before, to keep people honest and as MY OWN PERSONAL
preference of style, I use the parentheses in both cases.  (Emphasis
mine, not zippy's or root boy's -- don't flame if it's just not your
own personal style.)
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)