Hi Ed, > What do the language gurus say? I think what happens - and I think is correct to the ISO 14882 - is each Thing:: indicates "look for a scope called 'Thing'", and for a class name (rather than a namespace) the class name itself is scope accessible inside its own scope (which isn't the case for a namespace). As a coding convention, I'd suggest "Avoid doing that, even though the compiler allows it." HTH, --Eljay
