Redeclarations of predefined ordinal data types

7 Mar 2006

      The following two programs are rejected by gpc

program redeclare1;
type
   Int16 = Integer attribute( size = 16);
   Integer = Int16; {error: identifier `Integer' redeclared in a scope 
where an outer value was used}
begin
end.

program redeclare2;
type
   Integer = Integer attribute( size = 16); {error: identifier `Integer' 
redeclared in a scope where an outer value was used}
begin
end.

The following program is accepted:

program redeclare3;
type
   Integer = ShortInt;
begin
  writeln( 'SizeOf( Integer) = ', SizeOf( Integer))
end.

GPC has been accepting the above first two programs. Gale Paper 
reminded me that this was (probably) changed in gpc-20050325 with bug 
fix 20050325: check identifier scopes stricter (az25.pas, 
fjf1059*.pas).

However, I would argue that a type definition like

	int_nn = Integer attribute( size = nn);

does not "use" the Integer type as such in a strict sense. Thus, it can 
be treated as a special case, accepting the above two programs again. 
Same for the other predefined ordinal types that accept attribute( size 
= nn), like Word, Cardinal and Boolean.

Regards,

Adriaan van Os