Public Comment Number PC-UK0066 ISO/IEC CD 9899 (SC22N2620) Public Comment =========================================== Date: 1998-01-20 Author: Clive D.W. Feather Author Affiliation: Self Postal Address: Demon Internet Limited 322 Regents Park Road London N3 2QQ United Kingdom E-mail Address: Telephone Number: +44 181 371 1138 Fax Number: +44 181 371 1037 Number of individual comments: 1 Comment 1. Category: Inconsistency Committee Draft subsection: various Title: The term "access" is not well defined. Detailed description: The term "access" is not well defined. From context, it sometimes appears to mean "read the value", and sometimes "read or write the value". This ambiguity sometimes makes it hard to understand what is actually meant. There needs to be a definition in clause 3, and all uses of the term need to be checked for the read-only / read-write problem. Probably the best approach is to define it as "read or write", and to find and fix the places where "read" is meant. An example where "access" clearly means "read" is in 6.5.3.1p5: A reference to a value means either an access to or a modification of the value. So "access" presumably means read but not write. But if so, then 6.5.3p6: What constitutes an access to an object that has volatile-qualified type is implementation-defined. must also exclude writing. But that would mean that what constitutes a write to a volatile object is *not* implementation-defined, but rather undefined ! Since this is obviously not the intent, there is a clear contradiction that needs resolving. There are plenty of other instances; for example, 6.3p6: ... If a value is stored into an object ... the type of the lvalue becomes the effective type of the object for that access ... where writing is clearly meant to be included. However, the point is not to address these individual cases but rather make the whole Standard consistent.