position.hh:46: error: expected unqualified-id before ‘namespace’

Question

Here's my code:

 34  
 35 /**  
 36  ** \file position.hh  
 37  ** Define the example::position class.  
 38  */  
 39   
 40 #ifndef BISON_POSITION_HH   
 41 #define BISON_POSITION_HH   
 42    
 43 #include <iostream>   
 44 #include <string>   
 45    
 46 namespace example   
 47 {   
 48   /// Abstract a position.   
 49   class position   
 50   {   
 51   public:   
 52    
 53     /// Construct a position.   
 54     position ()    
 55       : filename (0), line (1), column (0)   
 56     {    

Thanks, speeder, that's great. Necrolis, thank you as well. Both of you guys are onto the same track on the compilation units. Here's the full error report:

In file included from location.hh:45, from parser.h:64, from scanner.h:25, from scanner.ll:8: position.hh:46: error: expected unqualified-id before ‘namespace’

location.hh looks like this:

35 /**
36  ** \file location.hh
37  ** Define the example::location class.
38  */
39 
40 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
41 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
42 
43 # include <iostream>
44 # include <string>
45 # include "position.hh"
46 
47 namespace example
48 {
49 
50   /// Abstract a location.
51   class location
52   {
53   public:

I should also add that these files are being generated by bison. it's when i try to compile the c++ scanner class generated by flex++ that I get to this stage. I get the .cc code by issuing flex --c++ -o scanner.cc scanner.ll.

Answer 1

this happen when a ; or some other closing thing is lacking before the namespace. Are you sure that the lines before 34 have no code? If they have code (even if that code is other #include) the error is there.

EDIT: Or in case all 34 lines have no code, the error is on the file that includes this header, most likely there are a code without a ending ; or } or ) or some other ending character, and right after it (ignoring comments, of course) there are the #include position.hh

Or if there are two includes in a row, one before position.hh, the last lines of the header included before position.hh are with the error, usually a structure without a ; after the closing }

Answer 2

The error might be occuring in a file other than the file its reported in(due to the compilation units), namely at or near the end of that 'other' file(such as a missing '}' or ';' or '#endif' etc)