I have raised this with Debian on gcc 3.4.2 and no response yet: namespace a {} namespace b {} namespace c { namespace a = b; } This fails to compile with: $ gcc-3.4 test.cpp test.cpp:4: error: declaration of `namespace a' conflicts with test.cpp:1: error: previous declaration of `namespace a' here This works with gcc 3.4.1 apparently. Could someone please check the new 3.4.3 release. -- Ken Foskey OpenOffice.org