Place helper functions in the same namespace as the class they support

Reason

A helper function is a function (usually supplied by the writer of a class) that does not need direct access to the representation of the class, yet is seen as part of the useful interface to the class. Placing them in the same namespace as the class makes their relationship to the class obvious and allows them to be found by argument dependent lookup.

Example

namespace Chrono { // here we keep time-related services

    class Time { /* ... */ };
    class Date { /* ... */ };

    // helper functions:
    bool operator==(Date, Date);
    Date next_weekday(Date);
    // ...
}

Note

This is especially important for overloaded operators.

Enforcement

• Flag global functions taking argument types from a single namespace.