8.1 Declarative Region
Static Semantics
For
each of the following constructs, there is a portion of the program text
called its
declarative region, within which nested declarations
can occur:
any declaration, other than that of an enumeration
type, that is not a completion of a previous declaration;
The declarative region
includes the text of the construct together with additional text determined
(recursively), as follows:
If a declaration is included, so is its completion,
if any.
If the declaration of a library unit (including
Standard — see
10.1.1) is included,
so are the declarations of any child units (and their completions, by
the previous rule). The child declarations occur after the declaration.
The declarative region of a declaration is also called
the declarative region of any view or entity declared by the declaration.
A
declaration occurs
immediately within a declarative region if
this region is the innermost declarative region that encloses the declaration
(the
immediately enclosing declarative region), not counting the
declarative region (if any) associated with the declaration itself.
A declaration is
local
to a declarative region if the declaration occurs immediately within
the declarative region. An entity is
local to a declarative region
if the entity is declared by a declaration that is local to the declarative
region.
A declaration is
global
to a declarative region if the declaration occurs immediately within
another declarative region that encloses the declarative region. An entity
is
global to a declarative region if the entity is declared by
a declaration that is global to the declarative region.
1 The children of a parent library unit
are inside the parent's declarative region, even though they do not occur
inside the parent's declaration or body. This implies that one can use
(for example) "P.Q" to refer to a child of P whose defining
name is Q, and that after "use P;" Q can refer (directly)
to that child.
2 As explained above and in
10.1.1,
“
Compilation Units - Library Units”,
all library units are descendants of Standard, and so are contained in
the declarative region of Standard. They are
not inside the declaration
or body of Standard, but they
are inside its declarative region.
3 For a declarative region that comes in
multiple parts, the text of the declarative region does not contain any
text that might appear between the parts. Thus, when a portion of a declarative
region is said to extend from one place to another in the declarative
region, the portion does not contain any text that might appear between
the parts of the declarative region.