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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: can "a;" be a declaration?
Message-ID: <1387@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 2-Dec-86 05:44:16 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1387
Posted: Tue Dec  2 05:44:16 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 08:19:06 EST
References: <1092@spice.cs.cmu.edu> <307@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <3644@utcsri.UUCP> <3692@utcsri.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 20

In article <3692@utcsri.UUCP>, greg@utcsri.UUCP (Gregory Smith) writes:
> In article <4647@ism780c.UUCP> tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) writes:
> >         If "a" is a global, they have no problem:
> >
> >	a;
> >	main() {
> >		a = 1;
> >	}
> Declarations inside blocks must specify a type or a storage class.  I
> am not saying that this is perfectly consistent; however it is
> thoroughly documented.

Here the ANSI C draft has fixed things up.  ALL declarations must
begin with a storage class specifier or a type specifier.  No exceptions.
So the above example is not valid ANSI C, even though the Unix compilers
accept it.  I approve of this change.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
Call +1 800 854 7179 or +1 714 540 9870 and order X3.159-198x (ANSI C) for $65.
Then spend two weeks reading it and weeping.  THEN send in formal comments!