When to use an elaborated type specifier

Question

Is there a particularly good reason to choose to use an elaborated type specifier? For example, in certain circumstances, one is required to use the template or

Answer 1

Elaborated type specifiers are required for declaring user-defined types. One use case is to forward declare your types. In the unlikely event that you have a function with the same name as an enum you have visible in scope you may need to use the elaborated type specifier in the function declaration:

enum A { A_START = 0 };

void A(enum A a) {}

int main() {
   enum A a;
   A( a );
}