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# Alternative operator representations

From cppreference.com
< cpp‎ | language

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 two kinds of alternatives: additional keywords that correspond to the operators that use these characters and special combinations of two or three ISO 646 compatible characters that are interpreted as if they were a single non-ISO 646 character.

## [edit] Alternative tokens

There are alternative spellings for several operators defined as tokens with special meaning in the C++ standard.

Primary | Alternative
--- | ---
`&&` | `and`
`&=` | `and_eq`
`&` | `bitand`
`|` | `bitor`
`~` | `compl`
`!` | `not`
`!=` | `not_eq`
|| | or
`|=` | `or_eq`
`^` | `xor`
`^=` | `xor_eq`

### [edit] 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.

## [edit] Digraphs and trigraphs

The following combinations of two and three characters (digraphs and trigraphs) are valid substitutions for their respective primary characters:

Primary | Digraph | Trigraph(until C++17)
--- | --- | ---
`{` | `<%` | `??<`
``} | `%>` | `??>`
`[` | `<:` | `??(`
`]` | `:>` | `??)`
`#` | `%:` | `??=`
`\` |  | `??/`
`^` |  | `??'`
`|` |  | `??!`
`~` |  | `??-`

Note that trigraphs (but not digraphs) are parsed before comments and string literals are recognized, so 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 \\??". | (until C++17)

When the parser meets the charater sequence <:: and the subsequent character is neither : nor >, the < is treated as a preprocessor token by itself and not as the first character of the alternative token <:. Thus std::vector<::std::string> won't be wrongly treated as std::vector[:std::string>. | (since C++11)

### [edit] Keywords

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

### [edit] Example

The following example demonstrates the use of several alternative tokens.

Run this code

    %:include <iostream>

    int main(int argc, char *argv<::>)
    <%
        if (argc > 1 and argv<:1:> not_eq NULL) <%
            std::cout << "Hello, " << argv<:1:> << '\n';
        %>
    %>

### [edit] See also

C documentation for Alternative operator representations

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