Recently I came across a snippet similar to the following:
int a <:20:>;
int b;
void foo()
<%
printf("Hello world");
a <: ++b :> = 440;
%>
What C++ style/syntax does this belong to? Thanks for your answer.
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SkypeMeSM
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looks like the source is feed through a special purpose pre-processor. – Richard Schneider Jun 28 '13 at 04:38
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@RichardSchneider Nope. That's legal C++ and quite entertaining during code reviews ;) – Captain Obvlious Jun 28 '13 at 04:44
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1OMG: you learn something new every day. – Richard Schneider Jun 28 '13 at 04:48
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@RichardSchneider: True that :) – SkypeMeSM Jun 28 '13 at 04:52
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@CaptainObvlious: It must be. This feels like gibberish and is a nice way of confusing people :) – SkypeMeSM Jun 28 '13 at 04:54
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@jogojapan The two questions are definitely related. Thanks for the link to other question. – SkypeMeSM Jun 28 '13 at 04:55
1 Answers
5
They're called digraphs:
Digraph Equivalent
<: [
:> ]
<% {
%> }
%: #
They're supported because in some countries few symbols might not be present on their keyboards, so they can combine keys such as < and : to form equivalent of[, and so on. The wikipedia entry also describes trigraphs.
Nawaz
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