On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 13:51:20 UTC, Joseph Rushton
Wakeling wrote:
On 09/09/13 15:12, Daniel Murphy wrote:
[snip]
/
Whoa, I didn't think of applying that to member functions.
This seems like
the answer. Put your variables and function prototypes at the
top of your
class. Done.
Problem -- what about:
class Foo
{
// Declarations
void foo();
int bar(double n);
// Definitions
void foo() { .... }
int bar(double n) { ....}
// Whoops! Forgot to include this one in the
// declarations list, but it's still accepted
// as part of the class
void goo() { ... }
}
A well-defined rule for separating out declarations and
definitions would check for that and throw a compile error.
I would argue that it is actually better this way (that not all
functions need to be in the declarations list) - its way more
flexible! This way you can leave out function declarations that
you are not really interested to see from a "functional overview
perspective" of the class.
AFAIC the cost of implementing this would be way too high for any
potential benefit gained from this. And, since Walter already
stated that this would "no way be mandatory", the implications
are that the compiler would need to enforce it once any one
function is declared in the declarations list, but... not enforce
it if no functions are declared in the list!
Also, leaving it flexible as it is now cannot silently break
anything. Worse that can happen is that you may inadvertently try
to implement goo() twice (since you may think the missing
declaration imply there is no definition), but then the compiler
will anyway complain about the duplicate definition.
So I agree with Jacob Carlborg - I would also like to know why
the above is not already sufficient...?
