Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++, 2nd Ed Contents | Prev | Next

More name decoration

In Chapter 4 the concept of name decoration was introduced. In the code 

void f();
class X { void f(); };

the function f( ) inside the scope of class X does not clash with the global version of f( ). The compiler performs this scoping by manufacturing different internal names for the global version of f( ) and X::f( ). In Chapter 4 it was suggested that the names are simply the class name “decorated” together with the function name, so the internal names the compiler uses might be _f and _X_f. However, it turns out that function name decoration involves more than the class name.

Here’s why. Suppose you want to overload two function names 

void print(char);
void print(float);

It doesn’t matter whether they are both inside a class or at the global scope. The compiler can’t generate unique internal identifiers if it uses only the scope of the function names. You’d end up with _print in both cases. The idea of an overloaded function is that you use the same function name, but different argument lists. Thus, for overloading to work the compiler must decorate the function name with the names of the argument types. The above functions, defined at global scope, produce internal names that might look something like _print_char and _print_float. It’s worth noting there is no standard for the way names must be decorated by the compiler, so you will see very different results from one compiler to another. (You can see what it looks like by telling the compiler to generate assembly-language output.) This, of course, causes problems if you want to buy compiled libraries for a particular compiler and linker – but even if name decoration were standardized, there would be other roadblocks because of the way different compilers generate code.

That’s really all there is to function overloading: You can use the same function name for different functions, as long as the argument lists are different. The compiler decorates the name, the scope, and the argument lists to produce internal names for it and the linker to use.

Overloading on return values

It’s common to wonder “why just scopes and argument lists? Why not return values?” It seems at first that it would make sense to also decorate the return value with the internal function name. Then you could overload on return values, as well: 

void f();
int f();

This works fine when the compiler can unequivocally determine the meaning from the context, as in int x = f( ); . However, in C you’ve always been able to call a function and ignore the return value. How can the compiler distinguish which call is meant in this case? Possibly worse is the difficulty the reader has in knowing which function call is meant. Overloading solely on return value is a bit too subtle, and thus isn’t allowed in C++.

Type-safe linkage

There is an added benefit to all this name decoration. A particularly sticky problem in C occurs when the client programmer misdeclares a function, or, worse, a function is called without declaring it first, and the compiler infers the function declaration from the way it is called. Sometimes this function declaration is correct, but when it isn’t, it can be a very difficult bug to find.

Because all functions must be declared before they are used in C++, the opportunity for this problem to pop up is greatly diminished. The C++ compiler refuses to declare a function automatically for you, so it’s likely you will include the appropriate header file. However, if for some reason you still manage to misdeclare a function, either by declaring by hand or including the wrong header file (perhaps one that is out of date), the name decoration provides a safety net that is often referred to as type-safe linkage.

Consider the following scenario. In one file is the definition for a function: 

//: C07:Def.cpp {O}
// Function definition
void f(int) {}
///:~

In the second file, the function is misdeclared and then called: 

//: C07:Use.cpp
//{L} Def
// Function misdeclaration
void f(char);

int main() {
//!  f(1); // Causes a linker error
} ///:~

Even though you can see that the function is actually f(int), the compiler doesn’t know this because it was told – through an explicit declaration – that the function is f(char). Thus, the compilation is successful. In C, the linker would also be successful, but not in C++. Because the compiler decorates the names, the definition becomes something like f_int, whereas the use of the function is f_char. When the linker tries to resolve the reference to f_char, it can only find f_int, and it gives you an error message. This is type-safe linkage. Although the problem doesn’t occur all that often, when it does it can be incredibly difficult to find, especially in a large project. This is one of the cases where you can easily find a difficult error in a C program simply by running it through the C++ compiler.

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