Why is a forward declaration in a function declaration allowed? - c++

Question

While reading about the visitor pattern I ran into this snippet of code:
virtual void visit(class Composite *, Component*) = 0;
This is a member function, and it seems to be forward declaring the class Composite inside its parameters. I tried this with just a normal function, like so:
void accept(class A a);
for some class A that I haven't declared or defined yet and the code worked fine. Why is this allowed? How, if at all, is it different from forward declaring before the line? Has anything changed recently in the standard in regards to this?
Many people are claiming this is a leftover of C, but then why does this code compile fine in C++, but not C?
#include <stdio.h>
int process(struct A a);
struct A{
int x;
};
int process(struct A a){
return a.x;
}
int main(void)
{
struct A a = {2};
printf("%d", process(a));
return 0;
}

Answer 1

This is called an incomplete type, and is a concept C++ inherited from C.
Incomplete types work this way: before you've defined a class B in your code, you can use class B varname as, say, an argument in function prototypes, or use pointers to this type as class B* ptr - anywhere where no details about a type besides its name are really needed.
Actually, you can write it differently - just put a class B; (which should work as a class declaration) before you use it as an incomplete type, and then you can write B varname instead of class B varname.
Pointers to incomplete types are often used with opaque pointers, which are probably the most common use of incomplete types in C++. Opaque pointers are described well enough in the linked Wikipedia article. Put short, it is a technique that allows your API to hide an entire class implementation.
Using the incomplete type syntaxis you describe in your question, the example code from Wikipedia:
//header file:
class Handle {
public:
/* ... */
private:
struct CheshireCat; // Not defined here
CheshireCat* smile; // Handle
};
//CPP file:
struct Handle::CheshireCat {
int a;
int b;
};
can be rewritten as:
//header file:
class Handle {
public:
/* ... */
private:
struct CheshireCat* smile; // Handle
};
//CPP file:
struct CheshireCat {
int a;
int b;
};
Note this: these code snippets are not equivalent, as the former defines a type Handle::CheshireCat, while the latter has it simply as CheshireCat.
On the code you gave as an example:
In C, the reason it doesn't compile is quite simple: the struct A in the function prototype is a declaration scoped to the function prototype, and thus it is different from the struct A which is declared latter. C and C++ have slightly different rules for this specific case. If you forward-declare the struct like this: struct A; before the function prototype, it will compile in both languages!
Other notable uses of this syntaxis:
This syntaxis has an important place as part of C++'s backward compatibility with C. You see, in C, after defining or forward-declaring a struct like this: struct A {}; or struct A;, the type's actual name would be struct A. To use the name as A, you needed to use a typedef. C++ does the latter automatically, but allows you to use A both as struct A and A. Same goes for class-es union-s, and enum-s.
Actually, some argue this has a semantical importance. Consider a function with the following signature: int asdf(A *paramname). Do you know what A is just by looking at the declaration? Is it a class, struct, enum or a union? People say that a signature like that can be made clearer in such a way: int asdf(enum A *paramname). This is a nice way of writing self-documenting code.

Answer 2

In C, structure names were not accessible without the struct keyword:
struct Foo {};
void bar(struct Foo foo) {...}
You could get around this by using a typedef as well:
typedef struct Foo {} Foo;
void bar(Foo foo) {...}
In C++, this remains for backward compatibility. It's been logically extended, including support for the class keyword instead of struct. class Composite * is almost equivalent to just saying Composite * in this regard. It is not necessarily used as a forward declaration, just accessing the type name.
Note that it can still be used to disambiguate if necessary:
struct Foo {};
void Foo();
int main() {
Foo foo; //error: Foo refers to the function
struct Foo foo; //okay: struct Foo refers to the class
}
Now the same declaration can introduce a type name, like it does in your accept example and possibly does in the visit example. For a function at namespace scope, if the class being declared is not found, it will be declared in the namespace containing the function (see N4140 [basic.scope.pdecl]/7).
This means that the following will not compile due to the struct/union mismatch:
void foo(struct Bar bar);
union Bar;
The above code is roughly equivalent to:
struct Bar;
void foo(Bar bar);
union Bar;