[cfe-dev] Cleaning up the representation of Decls in the AST

[Argiris Kirtzidis]

To sum up my point here, it is more syntactically accurate to consider 
RecordDecl a part of type-specifier.
In the syntax it's the type-specifier of a syntactic construct that 
tells us whether it's "struct s" or "struct s { int d; }".
If we are not getting this kind of information, the type-specifier is 
not represented correctly in the AST.

-Argiris


Argiris Kirtzidis wrote:
> Zhongxing Xu wrote:
>> I agree with Ted that we should separate syntax thing from semantics 
>> thing in the AST.
>>
>> struct s;
>> struct s a;
>> struct s { int d; } x;
>>
>> These 'struct s' have different meanings: type declaration, type 
>> specifier, type definition.
>> But syntactically they are all RecordDecl.
>
> Strictly syntactically speaking, and by standard terminology, here's 
> what the above constructs are:
>
> struct s;       ->   type-specifier ';'
> struct s a;    ->   type-specifier 'a' ';'
> struct s { int d; } x;    ->  type-specifier 'x' ';'
>
> Isn't it more faithful to the syntax to consider "struct s { int d; }" 
> as part of the type-specifier for 'x' ?
> Here's how a client may work when it receives "struct s { int d; } x;" 
> and wants to pretty-print it:
>
> -I've got a DeclGroup of one VarDecl named 'x'.
> -Print its type. It's type (the type-specifier part of the syntax) is 
> RecordTypeDef. Print the RecordDecl by getting it from the RecordTypeDef.
> -Print "x;"
>
> This seems more syntactically-oriented to me, why is it more confusing ?
>
> -Argiris
>
>