C++ variable declaration is treated like a function declaration

Question

The question is fairly theoretical, though it\'s interesting what makes MS VS2010 treat the following variable declaration (inside main) like a function declaration

Answer 1

Declare it without the ():

maidsafe::dht::PrivateKeyPtr pk;

Unfortunately, for primitive types that gives you an uninitialized value, but in C++11 you can value initialize with {}:

maidsafe::dht::PrivateKeyPtr pk{};

For a related parsing issue, see the c++ most vexing parse.