C++ Primer Plus

Language Linking

Another form of linking, called language linking, affects functions. First, a little background. A linker needs a different symbolic name for each distinct function. In C, this is simple to implement because there can be only one C function with a given name. So for internal purposes, a C compiler might translate a C function name such as spiff to _spiff. The C approach is termed C language linkage. However, C++ can have several functions with the same C++ name that have to be translated to separate symbolic names. Thus, the C++ compiler indulges in the process of name mangling or name decoration (as discussed in Chapter 8) to generate different symbolic names for overloaded functions. For example, it could convert spiff(int) ...