Assuming I don't use ANY overloaded functions, is there a way I can stop ALL name mangling?

Question

The title pretty much says it all. I know I can use and extern "C" block to stop mangling (although I'm not entirely sure where I should put said block) but is there a way that I can disable it for the whole program? And if I do, will that make the libraries that are compiled from the code easier to use with something like luajit's FFI?

EDIT: The question that this is supposedly a duplicate of is specific to DLLs and the Visual C++ compiler. I'm just asking a general C++ question.

Simply use the c-compiler (gcc not g++) to compile your code. — πάντα ῥεῖ, Jun 05 '14 at 12:19
I explained what's the advantage of using `extern` syntax in my answer. There's no way to switch it on globally, and it's good so. That way you exactly pick, which function names should stay unmangled as exported c API. — πάντα ῥεῖ, Jun 05 '14 at 15:48
It's a duplicate, but of [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/524633/how-can-i-avoid-name-mangling). Voting to re-open to re-close. — Dan, Jun 05 '14 at 17:04

πάντα ῥεῖ · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-05T15:54:34.127

3

As you have mentioned to disable name mangling using the extern "C" { } syntax to surround the function declarations you don't wan't to have mangled names for

extern "C" {
    int foo(int x, int y);
    void bar(const char* cstr); 
}

The easier way, if you are sure you're not using any c++ specific features, is to use the c-compiler to compile your code. For e.g. GCC toolchain call gcc instead of g++.

UPDATE:
The advantage of the extern method is that you can still use c++ features for the implementation (in a separate .cpp compilation unit), which is of course not possible when compiling your code as pure c-code. E.g.

#include "MyExportAPI.h"
#include <string>

void bar(const char* cstr) {
    std::string s(cstr); // <<< Note!
}

edited Jun 05 '14 at 15:54

answered Jun 05 '14 at 12:28

πάντα ῥεῖ

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And, of course, you need to write C rather than C++ to do this. – Useless Jun 05 '14 at 12:46
1

@Useless no, `extern "C"` functions can still be implemented using C++... – rubenvb Jun 05 '14 at 13:49
Yeah, _"this"_ was referring to using gcc, pre-edit. – Useless Jun 05 '14 at 13:56
So what do I wrap in an extern block? I can't just put the whole class in an extern block. – benbot Jun 05 '14 at 15:47
@thecodethinker You wrap global function declarations there, that can be used as a c API. It doesn't work for classes anyway! – πάντα ῥεῖ Jun 05 '14 at 15:50

Assuming I don't use ANY overloaded functions, is there a way I can stop ALL name mangling?

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