Re: C2275: illegal use of this type as an expression? It's a DWORD?

From:

Ulrich Eckhardt <eckhardt@satorlaser.com>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.language

Date:

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:31:11 +0200

Message-ID:

<mu0ij4-1pv.ln1@satorlaser.homedns.org>

kilik3000@gmail.com wrote:

void OnPaint(HWND hwnd)
{
    PAINTSTRUCT ps;
    BeginPaint(hwnd, &ps);
    if (!IsRectEmpty(&ps.rcPaint))
    {
        // compute time to next update - we update once a second
        SYSTEMTIME st;
        GetSystemTime(&st);

        DWORD dwTimeToNextTick = 1000 - st.wMilliseconds;
        SetTimer(hwnd, 1, dwTimeToNextTick,
            InvalidateAndKillTimer);
    }
    PaintContent(hwnd,&ps);
    EndPaint(hwnd, &ps);
}

AFAICT, this code is valid C++ and C, although it is really bad because
completely lacks error checking. However, for this to compile as C, you
would need a C99 compliant compiler that allows declarations in the middle
of a block as opposed to only at the beginning.

Here is the compiler output:
error C2275: 'DWORD' : illegal use of this type as an expression see
declaration of 'DWORD'
error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier
'dwTimeToNextTick'
error C2065: 'dwTimeToNextTick' : undeclared identifier

I'm using the Win32 project template in VS 2005.

Looks like you you neither use a C++ nor a C99 compiler.

Uli