<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Chapter 39. Demangling</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.74.0" /><meta name="keywords" content=" ISO C++ , library " /><link rel="home" href="../spine.html" title="The GNU C++ Library Documentation" /><link rel="up" href="extensions.html" title="Part XII. Extensions" /><link rel="prev" href="ext_io.html" title="Chapter 38. Input and Output" /><link rel="next" href="ext_concurrency.html" title="Chapter 40. Concurrency" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Chapter 39. Demangling</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ext_io.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Part XII. Extensions </th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ext_concurrency.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="chapter" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a id="manual.ext.demangle"></a>Chapter 39. Demangling</h2></div></div></div><p> Transforming C++ ABI identifiers (like RTTI symbols) into the original C++ source identifiers is called “<span class="quote">demangling.</span>” </p><p> If you have read the <a class="ulink" href="http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/latest-doxygen/namespaceabi.html" target="_top">source documentation for <code class="code">namespace abi</code></a> then you are aware of the cross-vendor C++ ABI in use by GCC. One of the exposed functions is used for demangling, <code class="code">abi::__cxa_demangle</code>. </p><p> In programs like <span class="command"><strong>c++filt</strong></span>, the linker, and other tools have the ability to decode C++ ABI names, and now so can you. </p><p> (The function itself might use different demanglers, but that's the whole point of abstract interfaces. If we change the implementation, you won't notice.) </p><p> Probably the only times you'll be interested in demangling at runtime are when you're seeing <code class="code">typeid</code> strings in RTTI, or when you're handling the runtime-support exception classes. For example: </p><pre class="programlisting"> #include <exception> #include <iostream> #include <cxxabi.h> struct empty { }; template <typename T, int N> struct bar { }; int main() { int status; char *realname; // exception classes not in <stdexcept>, thrown by the implementation // instead of the user std::bad_exception e; realname = abi::__cxa_demangle(e.what(), 0, 0, &status); std::cout << e.what() << "\t=> " << realname << "\t: " << status << '\n'; free(realname); // typeid bar<empty,17> u; const std::type_info &ti = typeid(u); realname = abi::__cxa_demangle(ti.name(), 0, 0, &status); std::cout << ti.name() << "\t=> " << realname << "\t: " << status << '\n'; free(realname); return 0; } </pre><p> This prints </p><pre class="screen"> <code class="computeroutput"> St13bad_exception => std::bad_exception : 0 3barI5emptyLi17EE => bar<empty, 17> : 0 </code> </pre><p> The demangler interface is described in the source documentation linked to above. It is actually written in C, so you don't need to be writing C++ in order to demangle C++. (That also means we have to use crummy memory management facilities, so don't forget to free() the returned char array.) </p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ext_io.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="extensions.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ext_concurrency.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Chapter 38. Input and Output </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../spine.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Chapter 40. Concurrency</td></tr></table></div></body></html>