I wrote a sketch that used the millis() function in several places. I got odd behavior because I inadvertently used the plain millis in one line, without the parens. It evaluated to zero when running.

Why didn't the compiler flag this as an undeclared variable? I suspect it's because the name was already in the symbol table, but I still would have thought it'd be caught. Is this a quirk, or expected? If expected, what is the benefit?

C/C++ is not my main language so be gentle. (-:

I wrote a sketch that used the millis() function in several places. I got odd behavior because I inadvertently used the plain millis in one line, without the parens. It evaluated to zero when running.

Why didn't the compiler flag this as an undeclared variable? I suspect it's because the name was already in the symbol table, but I still would have thought it'd be caught. Is this a quirk, or expected? If expected, what is the benefit?

C/C++ is not my main language so be gentle. (-:

Edit as requested to show some code. This is an incomplete sample, but shows the usage:

const unsigned long GATE_OPEN_TIMER = 7000;
const unsigned long GATE_CLOSE_TIMER = 12000;
...
unsigned long gateStopTime = 0;
...

  if (isGateCycling) {                 // if open/close cycle is running
    if (isGatePassive) {               // if we're not applying power
      if (millis() >= gateStopTime) {  // if current delay expired
        digitalWrite(GateCloseRelay, ACTIVE);
        gateStopTime = millis() + GATE_CLOSE_TIMER;
        isGatePassive = false;

... followed by similar logic for the reverse direction. If any use of millis() is replaced by millis, the code falls over but the compiler sees nothing wrong.