Something Hard to Google for

[jasonwthompson]

I'm working on some code and I noticed that there are functions that
contain a $ in them. Does anyone know what they mean? I suspect that
they are macro definitions, but I'm not sure if the $ is legal in a
macro def.

Or does a $ have an actual meaning in C/C++?

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* (e-mail address removed):

I'm working on some code and I noticed that there are functions that
contain a $ in them. Does anyone know what they mean? I suspect that
they are macro definitions, but I'm not sure if the $ is legal in a
macro def.

Or does a $ have an actual meaning in C/C++?

$ is not supported in standard C++ names, but can be supported as a
language extension.

A $ in a string, on the other hand, can mean anything or nothing,
depending on what the string is used for.

 

[Laurent D.A.M. MENTEN]

I'm working on some code and I noticed that there are functions that
contain a $ in them. Does anyone know what they mean? I suspect that
they are macro definitions, but I'm not sure if the $ is legal in a
macro def.

Or does a $ have an actual meaning in C/C++?

hmmmm... looks like OpenVMS code, isn't it? Folks at digital used it as
others do with underscore to separate parts of identifiers: SYS$QIO()
would mean something like QIO function of the SYS library.

Yet this is not valid in C++ identifiers, gcc does not complain about it
unless -ansi is passed,

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Laurent D.A.M. MENTEN:

hmmmm... looks like OpenVMS code, isn't it? Folks at digital used it as
others do with underscore to separate parts of identifiers: SYS$QIO()
would mean something like QIO function of the SYS library.

As I recall $ was also used in API function names on the HPx000 series
under MPE/xx.

Argh, off-topic trivia...

Cheers,

- Alf