Consider a query feature enabling the user (human or machine) of the
Standard Library to retrieve signature information describing all standard
declarations. For example the user might enter a command to get a listing
of all headers.  The elements of that list would be identical to the
character sequences between the '<' and '>' used to #include standard
headers.  Additionally the user would be able to query each header to
retrieve a listing of all free functions class definitions and template
declarations.

This would facilitate the location of resources within the Standard Library.
Both manual and automated users of the Standard Library would benefit from
this capability.  In particular, this would greatly reduce the difficulty
of creating an IDE with powerful code completion functionality.

The same query capability should be extended to user defined libraries.
That is, the means of providing this capability for the Standard Library
should itself be standardized and made available to developers of
thrid-party libraries.


--
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