functions within functions

[Jim ADCOCK]

In article <1991Jan22.081057.8567 at ithaca.uucp> garry at ithaca.uucp (Garry Wiegand) writes:
|When the C standards committee was meeting, did they discuss allowing 
|the declaration of functions within functions? Ie, making:
|
|    void outside(void) { 
|    	static void inside(void) {}
|       	inside(); 
|    }
|
|count as legal C? Neither my quasi-Ansi C nor my g++ compiler will
|accept it.
|
|The name-space advantages should be obvious, and as far as I can
|see the syntax and semantics are clear and unambiguous, with no
|unfortunate side effects. (Except: I'm not sure if the word "static"
|would have any meaning in the context.)  
|
|So I'm guessing that if they thought about it they must have decided 
|not to break old compilers that were strongly "moded" inside. Or
|that there was some theological argument. Does anyone know? 
|
|Put it on the list for next time. 
|
|(The prohibition in C++ seems silly considering that a simple wrapper:
|
|    void outside(void) {
|        class wrapper {public:
|            static void inside(void){}
|        };
|        wrapper::inside();
|    }
|
|turns it into a legal program.)

I don't think it would be too hard to remove the requirement for 
the wrapper class -- but, that still wouldn't give people the nested
function capabilities they'd expect from playing with other languages.

In C++, the nested class [and therefore the nested function] only is 
allowed access to the type names, static variables, extern variables and
functions, and enumerations from the enclosing scope.

Even if you didn't have to write the wrapper:: prefix on inside(), 
inside() still wouldn't be able to access the auto variables of outside().
So you still couldn't do the Pascal hack of declaring inner functions
with implied parameters, for example.

Seems to me the end result would come out half-Pas'cal'ed.