Alternative operator representations

 

C++

Compiler support

Freestanding and hosted

Language

Standard library

Standard library headers

Named requirements

Feature test macros (C++20)

Language support library

Concepts library (C++20)

Metaprogramming library (C++11)

Diagnostics library

General utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Iterators library

Ranges library (C++20)

Algorithms library

Numerics library

Localizations library

Input/output library

Filesystem library (C++17)

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Concurrency support library (C++11)

Execution support library (C++26)

Technical specifications

Symbols index

External libraries

 

C++ language

General topics
Preprocessor Comments	Keywords Escape sequences
Flow control
Conditional execution statements
if	switch
Iteration statements (loops)
for range-for (C++11)	while do-while
Jump statements
continue - break	goto - return
Functions
Function declaration
Lambda function expression
inline specifier
Dynamic exception specifications (until C++17*)
noexcept specifier (C++11)
Exceptions
throw-expression try block	handler
Namespaces
Namespace declaration	Namespace aliases
Types
Fundamental types Enumeration types Function types	Class/struct types Union types
Specifiers
const/volatile decltype (C++11) auto (C++11)	constexpr (C++11) consteval (C++20) constinit (C++20)
Storage duration specifiers
Initialization
Default-initialization Value-initialization Zero-initialization Copy-initialization Direct-initialization	Aggregate initialization List-initialization (C++11)   Constant initialization Reference initialization

Expressions
Value categories Order of evaluation	Operators Operator precedence
Alternative representations
Literals
Boolean - Integer - Floating-point
Character - String - nullptr (C++11)
User-defined (C++11)
Utilities
Attributes (C++11)
Types
typedef declaration
Type alias declaration (C++11)
Casts
Implicit conversions static_cast const_cast	Explicit conversions dynamic_cast reinterpret_cast
Memory allocation
new expression	delete expression
Classes
Class declaration Constructors this pointer	Access specifiers friend specifier
Class-specific function properties
Virtual function override specifier (C++11)   final specifier (C++11)	explicit (C++11) static
Special member functions
Default constructor Copy constructor Move constructor (C++11)	Copy assignment Move assignment (C++11) Destructor
Templates
Class template Function template	Template specialization Parameter packs (C++11)
Miscellaneous
Inline assembly	History of C++

 

Expressions

General
Value categories Order of evaluation Constant expressions Primary expressions	Lambda expressions (C++11) Requires expressions (C++20) Pack indexing expression (C++26) Potentially-evaluated expressions
Literals
Integer literals Floating-point literals Boolean literals Character literals	Escape sequences String literals Null pointer literal (C++11) User-defined literal (C++11)
Operators
Assignment operators Increment and decrement Arithmetic operators Logical operators Comparison operators Member access operators Other operators new-expression delete-expression throw-expression	alignof sizeof sizeof... (C++11) typeid noexcept (C++11) Fold expressions (C++17) Alternative representations of operators Precedence and associativity Operator overloading Default comparisons (C++20)
Conversions
Implicit conversions Explicit conversions Usual arithmetic conversions     User-defined conversion	const_cast static_cast dynamic_cast reinterpret_cast

 

C++ (and C) source code may be written in any non-ASCII 7-bit character set that includes the ISO 646:1983 invariant character set. However, several C++ operators and punctuators require characters that are outside of the ISO 646 codeset: {, }, [, ], #, \, ^, |, ~. To be able to use character encodings where some or all of these symbols do not exist (such as the German DIN 66003), C++ defines the following alternatives composed of ISO 646 compatible characters.

Alternative tokens

There are alternative spellings for several operators and other tokens that use non-ISO646 characters. In all respects of the language, each alternative token behaves exactly the same as its primary token, except for its spelling (the stringification operator can make the spelling visible). The two-letter alternative tokens are sometimes called "digraphs". Despite being four-letters long, %:%: is also considered a digraph.

Primary	Alternative
&&	and
&=	and_eq
&	bitand
|	bitor
~	compl
!	not
!=	not_eq
||	or
|=	or_eq
^	xor
^=	xor_eq
{	<%
}	%>
[	<:
]	:>
#	%:
##	%:%:

When the character sequence <:: is not followed by : or >, the < character is treated as a preprocessing token by itself and not as the first character of the alternative token <:. Thus std::vector<::std::string> will not be wrongly treated as std::vector[:std::string>.

Notes

The characters & and ! are invariant under ISO-646, but alternatives are provided for the tokens that use these characters anyway to accommodate even more restrictive historical charsets.

There is no alternative spelling (such as eq) for the equality operator == because the character = was present in all supported charsets.

Compatibility with C

The same words are defined in the C programming language in the include file <iso646.h> as macros. Because in C++ these are built into the language, the C++ version of <iso646.h>, as well as <ciso646>, does not define anything. The non-word digraphs (e.g <%), however, are part of the core language and can be used without including any header (otherwise, they would be unusable on any charset that lacks #).

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of several alternative tokens.

Run this code

%:include <iostream>
 
struct X
<%
    compl X() <%%> // destructor
    X() <%%>
    X(const X bitand) = delete; // copy constructor
    // X(X and) = delete; // move constructor
 
    bool operator not_eq(const X bitand other)
    <%
       return this not_eq bitand other;
    %>
%>;
 
int main(int argc, char* argv<::>) 
<%
    // lambda with reference-capture:
    auto greet = <:bitand:>(const char* name)
    <%
        std::cout << "Hello " << name
                  << " from " << argv<:0:> << '\n';
    %>;
 
    if (argc > 1 and argv<:1:> not_eq nullptr)
        greet(argv<:1:>);
    else
        greet("Anon");
%>

Possible output:

Hello Anon from ./a.out

Trigraphs (removed in C++17)

The following three-character groups (trigraphs) are parsed before comments and string literals are recognized, and each appearance of a trigraph is replaced by the corresponding primary character:

Primary	Trigraph
{	??<
}	??>
[	??(
]	??)
#	??=
\	??/
^	??'
|	??!
~	??-

Because trigraphs are processed early, a comment such as // Will the next line be executed?????/ will effectively comment out the following line, and the string literal such as "Enter date ??/??/??" is parsed as "Enter date \\??".

Keywords

and, and_eq, bitand, bitor, compl, not, not_eq, or, or_eq, xor, xor_eq

Defect reports

The following behavior-changing defect reports were applied retroactively to previously published C++ standards.

DR	Applied to	Behavior as published	Correct behavior
CWG 1104	C++98	the alternative token <: caused std::vector<::std::string> to be treated as std::vector[:std::string>	added an additional lexing rule to address this case

See also

C documentation for Alternative operators and tokens