Re: Anonymous namespace and internal linkage

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 8 Feb 2009 16:21:28 CST
Message-ID:
<2fe39c27-25bd-4849-8d76-a02eeff5afaa@p37g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 7, 6:46 pm, Anand Hariharan <mailto.anand.hariha...@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Feb 6, 7:40 am, James Kanze <james.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 6, 9:33 am, Anand Hariharan <mailto.anand.hariha...@gmail.com>
wrote:

This code fails during linking:
namespace {
void FuncA()
{
/*extern*/ void FuncB(void);
FuncB();
}
void FuncB() {}
}
int main()
{
FuncA();
}
Is it to be expected?
Isn't 'extern' qualifier meaningless here?


It should be.

It turns out that the linker does not have a problem when the 'extern'

is

uncommented.


That sounds like an error.

Technically, of course, you have undefined behavior (both
ways). But the FuncB called in FuncA is a function in the
anonymous namespace; the FuncB you define isn't, so it isn't
the same function.


FuncB *is* defined in the anonymous namespace.


So I see. I misread your code, then made the mistake of
reentering it, instead of copy/pasting it.

Could you kindly clarify why it is UB?


If the definition of FuncB is outside of the unnamed namespace,
you haven't provided a definition for the FuncB in the unnamed
namespace. For the actual code, there is no UB---it's a fully
conformant and correct program.

(FWIW: both Sun CC and g++ give a link error in both cases,
with or without the extern. So does the version of VC++ that
I have here: the one from Visual Studios 8.)


So how does one call a function defined farther down in the
same file, in an anonymous namespace?


As you did. With or without the extern---as you correctly
assumed, the extern makes no difference here.

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