question about anonymous namespace...

[peter koch]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

On 23 Okt., 22:52, Hendrik Schober <spamt...@gmx.d ewrote:

James Kanze wrote:

On Oct 23, 5:35 pm, "spamboun...@gm x.de" <spamboun...@gm x.dewrote:
[...]

I'd bet a horse and a carrot that "unnamed" is the literal
meaning of "anonymous" .

>

Actually, no.  From the way I understand English, anonymous
means that the name is hidden, and not visible; unnamed means
that it doesn't exist.  In which case, anonymous is actually
closer to what really happens.

>
  According to my dictionary, "anonymous" derives from an old
  Latin word which derives from a Greek word, consisting of "an"
  ("without") and "onuma" ("name"), and meaning "nameless".
  I know, of course, that this leaves a lot of room for a debate
  about whether today this actually is "the literal meaning" of
  the word or not... However, my dictionary then produces "having
  an unknown or unacknowledged name" as the first of the three
  meanings it comes up with. (And now there's room for a debate
  whether my dictionary is actually worth anything...)
>
  Schobi

But your dictionary seems to agree with James Kanze, right? anonymous
= unknown name, unnamed = has no name. Regarding the etymology, it is
quite normal that the original meaning of a word changes meaning over
time.

/Peter

[Hendrik Schober]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

Luna Moon wrote:

[...]
I thought "static" means "persistent ", are the anonymous name space
persistent?

'static' is one of the (if not the) most overloaded keywords in
C and C++. It means different things in different contexts.

[...]

Schobi

[James Kanze]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

On Oct 23, 11:21 pm, Luna Moon <lunamoonm...@g mail.comwrote:

On Oct 22, 4:05 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.co mwrote:

I thought "static" means "persistent ", are the anonymous name
space persistent?

In C++, the static keyword is very overloaded. It can affect
linkage or lifetime, or both, depending on where it is used.
When used with a local variable, it means static lifetime, which
corresponds more or less to the general English meaning (not to
be confused with persistent, which is usually used to mean that
the lifetime extends beyond the execution of the program). If
you apply it to a function or variable at namespace scope,
however, it means internal linkage---the opposite of extern
(more or less: extern can also mean that the declaration is not
a definition---the actual rules are not at all orthogonal).

All variables declared at namespace scope have static lifetime,
whether they are declared with the keyword static or not.
Member variables declared with the static keyword also have
static lifetime; without the static keyword, they have the
lifetime of the containing object. Variables defined with
local scope have static lifetime if defined with the static
keyword, automatic otherwise.

Functions don't have lifetime, in the sense C++ defines it;
they're just there.

If you define "static" in a function, it will only get
initialized once and can be used forever...

Not forever. Only until the end of the program. A persistent
variable could be used forever, but there is no direct support
for this in the language; you have to implement it yourself.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kan ze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orientée objet/
Beratung in objektorientier ter Datenverarbeitu ng
9 place Sémard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'École, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34

[James Kanze]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

On Oct 24, 12:13 am, peter koch <peter.koch.lar ...@gmail.comwr ote:

On 23 Okt., 22:52, Hendrik Schober <spamt...@gmx.d ewrote:

James Kanze wrote:

On Oct 23, 5:35 pm, "spamboun...@gm x.de" <spamboun...@gm x.dewrote:
[...]
>I'd bet a horse and a carrot that "unnamed" is the
>literal meaning of "anonymous" .

Actually, no. From the way I understand English,
anonymous means that the name is hidden, and not visible;
unnamed means that it doesn't exist. In which case,
anonymous is actually closer to what really happens.

According to my dictionary, "anonymous" derives from an
old Latin word which derives from a Greek word, consisting
of "an" ("without") and "onuma" ("name"), and meaning
"nameless". I know, of course, that this leaves a lot of
room for a debate about whether today this actually is
"the literal meaning" of the word or not... However, my
dictionary then produces "having an unknown or
unacknowledged name" as the first of the three meanings it
comes up with. (And now there's room for a debate whether
my dictionary is actually worth anything...)

But your dictionary seems to agree with James Kanze, right?
anonymous = unknown name, unnamed = has no name. Regarding the
etymology, it is quite normal that the original meaning of a
word changes meaning over time.

In everyday English, words can also be a bit ambiguous. I'm
pretty sure that a native English speaker would "feel" a
difference (at least a nuace of a difference) between anonymous
and unnamed, but there is also some overlap in the meanings. In
technical fields, we then specialize the meaning, so that it is
exact.

I did a quick find on the standard; all uses of anonymous were
for anonymous unions or anonymous bit fields, so Hendrik is
probably right that we should be talking about unnamed unions.
Regardless of the appropriateness of the term, based on its
natural English use, it's the formal term used in the standard.
Or "we should have been talking about unnamed namespace":
regardless of the standard terminology, "anonymous namespace"
has been adopted by the technical experts to describe this
feature, and is widely understood and used; in this specialized,
technical sense, anonymous and unnamed are exact synonyms, and
you can pretty much use them interchangeably without causing
problems of understanding.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kan ze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orientée objet/
Beratung in objektorientier ter Datenverarbeitu ng
9 place Sémard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'École, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34

[spambouncer@gmx.de]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

On 24 Okt., 09:36, James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrote:

...
regardless of the standard terminology, "anonymous namespace"
has been adopted by the technical experts to describe this
feature, and is widely understood and used; in this specialized,
technical sense, anonymous and unnamed are exact synonyms, and
you can pretty much use them interchangeably without causing
problems of understanding.

There you go. Geez, people! What a debate! My betting a horse was
supposed to end the nitpicking. It wasn't a real horse, see. There
wasn't the slightest ambiguity to begin with. Everyone knew exactly
what we were talking about.

Ok, who wants the carrot?

[Pete Becker]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

On 2008-10-24 04:20:39 -0400, "spambouncer@gm x.de" <spambouncer@gm x.desaid:

On 24 Okt., 09:36, James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrote:

>...
>regardless of the standard terminology, "anonymous namespace"
>has been adopted by the technical experts to describe this
>feature, and is widely understood and used; in this specialized,
>technical sense, anonymous and unnamed are exact synonyms, and
>you can pretty much use them interchangeably without causing
>problems of understanding.

>
There you go. Geez, people! What a debate! My betting a horse was
supposed to end the nitpicking. It wasn't a real horse, see.

Indeed. It didn't even have a name.

--
Pete
Roundhouse Consulting, Ltd. (www.versatilecoding.com) Author of "The
Standard C++ Library Extensions: a Tutorial and Reference
(www.petebecker.com/tr1book)

[Jeff Schwab]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

Pete Becker wrote:

On 2008-10-24 04:20:39 -0400, "spambouncer@gm x.de" <spambouncer@gm x.de>
said:
>

>On 24 Okt., 09:36, James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrote:

>>...
>>regardless of the standard terminology, "anonymous namespace"
>>has been adopted by the technical experts to describe this
>>feature, and is widely understood and used; in this specialized,
>>technical sense, anonymous and unnamed are exact synonyms, and
>>you can pretty much use them interchangeably without causing
>>problems of understanding.

>>
>There you go. Geez, people! What a debate! My betting a horse was
>supposed to end the nitpicking. It wasn't a real horse, see.

>
Indeed. It didn't even have a name.

That took me a minute.

Anyway, don't knock it 'till you try it. You see, I've been through the
desert on a horse with no name. (In the desert, you forget your name,
so I guess the horse was really more "anonymous" than "unnamed.")

[Gennaro Prota]

Re: question about anonymous namespace...

James Kanze wrote:
[...]

>But your dictionary seems to agree with James Kanze, right?
>anonymous = unknown name, unnamed = has no name. Regarding the
>etymology, it is quite normal that the original meaning of a
>word changes meaning over time.

>
In everyday English, words can also be a bit ambiguous. I'm
pretty sure that a native English speaker would "feel" a
difference (at least a nuace of a difference) between anonymous
and unnamed, but there is also some overlap in the meanings. In
technical fields, we then specialize the meaning, so that it is
exact.

FWIW, I feel the difference, too. However I can see "unnamed" as
deriving either from the substantive "name" or the verb "to
name", in which case it sound as "is not named". And my mind
leans towards the latter meaning when I add "nameless" to the
mix :-)

--
Gennaro Prota | name.surname yahoo.com
Breeze C++ (preview): <https://sourceforge.net/projects/breeze/>
Do you need expertise in C++? I'm available.