Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!think!mintaka!mit-eddie!bu.edu!mirror!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Simple questions about array declarations
Message-ID: <16063@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 1 Mar 90 16:05:35 GMT
References: <25E833AA.15362@paris.ics.uci.edu> <12235@smoke.BRL.MIL> <16045@haddock.ima.isc.com> <12248@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1990Feb28.221846.25750@granite.cr.bull.com>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 12

In article <1990Feb28.221846.25750@granite.cr.bull.com> blodgett@granite.cr.bull.com (Bruce Blodgett) writes:
>To determine the reason that the declaration
>	static int array7[];
>is not allowed, ask yourself, "if this is the only declaration of
>array7, how many elements should the array have?"  The answer, of
>course, is that you can't tell.  That is why this is not allowed.

So why doesn't the language wait to see if it *is* the only declaration before
rejecting it?  In other words, why isn't that a legal non-defining forward
declaration?  Note that "int foo[];" is legal, though it has the same problem.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint