9.1 Name Taxonomy

Ru-Brd

9.1 Name Taxonomy

C++ classifies names in a variety of ways ”a large variety of ways in fact. To help cope with this abundance of terminology, we provide tables Table 9.1 and Table 9.2, which describe these classifications. Fortunately, you can gain good insight into most C++ template issues by familiarizing yourself with two major naming concepts:

1. A name is a qualified name if the scope to which it belongs is explicitly denoted using a scoperesolution operator ( :: ) or a member access operator ( . or -> ). For example, this->count is a qualified name, but count is not (even though the plain count might actually refer to a class member).

2. A name is a dependent name if it depends in some way on a template parameter. For example, std::vector<T>::iterator is a dependent name if T is a template parameter, but it is a nondependent name if T is a known typedef (for example, of int ).

Table 9.1. Name Taxonomy (part one)

Classification	Explanation and Notes
Identifier	A name that consists solely of an uninterrupted sequences of letters , underscores ( _ ) and digits. It cannot start with a digit, and some identifiers are reserved for the implementation: You should not introduce them in your programs (as a rule of thumb, avoid leading underscores and double underscores). The concept of "letter" should be taken broadly and includes special universal character names ( UCNs ) that encode glyphs from nonalphabetical languages.
Operator-function-id	The keyword operator followed by the symbol for an operator ” for example, operator new and operator [ ] . Many operators have alternative representations. For example, operator & can equivalently be written as operator bitand even when it denotes the unary address of operator.
Conversion-function-id	Used to denote user -defined implicit conversion operator ”for example operator int& , which could also be obfuscated as operator int bitand .
Template-id	The name of a template followed by template arguments enclosed in angle brackets; for example, List<T, int, 0> . (Strictly speaking, the C++ standard allows only simple identifiers for the template name of a template-id. However, this is probably an oversight and an operator-function-id should be allowed too; e.g. operator+<X<int> > .)
Unqualified-id	The generalization of an identifier. It can be any of the above (identifier, operator-function-id, conversion-function-id or template-id) or a "destructor name" (for example, notations like ~Data or ~List<T, T, N> ).
Qualified-id	An unqualified-id that is qualified with the name of a class or namespace, or just with the global scope resolution operator. Note that such a name itself can be qualified. Examples are ::X , S::x , Array<T>::y , and ::N::A<T>::z .
Qualified name	This term is not defined in the standard, but we use it to refer to names that undergo so-called qualified lookup . Specifically, this is a qualified-id or an unqualified-id that is used after an explicit member access operator ( . or -> ). Examples are S::x , this->f , and p->A::m . However, just class_mem in a context that is implicitly equivalent to this->class_mem is not a qualified name: The member access must be explicit.
Unqualified name	An unqualified-id that is not a qualified name. This is not a standard term but corresponds to names that undergo what the standard calls unqualified lookup .

Table 9.2. Name Taxonomy (part two)

Classification	Explanation and Notes
Name	Either a qualified or an unqualified name.
Dependent name	A name that depends in some way on a template parameter. Certainly any qualified or unqualified name that explicitly contains a template parameter is dependent. Furthermore, a qualified name that is qualified by a member access operator ( . or -> ) is dependent if the type of the expression on the left of the access operator depends on a template parameter. In particular, b in this->b is a dependent name when it appears in a template. Finally, the identifier ident in a call of the form ident(x, y, z) is a dependent name if and only if any of the argument expressions has a type that depends on a template parameter.
Nondependent name	A name that is not a dependent name by the above description.

It is useful to read through the tables to gain some familiarity with the terms that are sometimes used to describe C++ template issues, but it is not essential to remember the exact meaning of every term. Should the need arise, they can be easily found in the index.

Ru-Brd