Parsing issue: Instance reinterpreted as function-pointer something

[Hendrik Lönngren]

Binary package hint: gcc-4.4

When compiling the attached code with

g++ -c -o test.o test.cpp

I get the following error:

test.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
test.cpp:15: error: request for member ‘dummy’ in ‘b’, which is of non-class type ‘B(A (*)())’

Actually I don’t even think that is a type.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: g++-4.4 4.4.4-14ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.50-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Jun 18 08:54:49 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=eo
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gcc-4.4

[Hendrik Lönngren (hendrik0)]

On further thought, I see that g++ allows "A()" as a shortcut for "A(*)()", so it confuses "B b(A());" with a function declaration. As this might be as designed, I am closing this bug.
But still, I think that this code should be perfectly legal. Also, the compiler error would be much clearer if it said "B (*)(A (*)())" instead of "B(A (*)())". Overall, allowing that shortcut doesn’t seems like a good idea to me.