I often hear claims that C++ is a context-sensitive language. Take the following example:
a b(c);
Is this a variable definition or a function declaration? That depends on the meaning of the symbol c. If c is a variable, then a b(c); defines a variable named b of type a. It is directly initialized with c. But if c is a type, then a b(c); declares a function named b that takes a c and returns an a.
If you look up the definition of context-free languages, it will basically tell you that all grammar rules must have left-hand sides that consist of exactly one non-terminal symbol. Context-sensitive grammars, on the other hand, allow arbitrary strings of terminal and non-terminal symbols on the left-hand side.
Browsing through Appendix A of “The C++ Programming Language”, I couldn’t find a single grammar rule that had anything else besides a single non-terminal symbol on its left-hand side. That would imply that C++ is context-free. (Of course, every context-free language is also context-sensitive in the sense that the context-free languages form a subset of the context-sensitive languages, but that is not the point.)
So, is C++ context-free or context-sensitive?
