Software Engineering and Computer Games

22.14. Name-mangling

When a compiler processes C++ code it changes the names of functions to include information about the types of the function’s arguments. This process, normally invisible, is called ‘name-mangling’.

You most often notice the effects of name-mangling when you put a prototype of a class method in a header file, but then fail to implement the method in any of your project’s *.cpp files. The project will compile all right, but at the very end, you will get a linker message. Thus, if you were to leave out the code for the cCritter method int cCritter::move(Real dt), you would get a linker error like the following.

 popview.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol “public: int __thiscall cCritter::move(float)” (?move@cCritter@@QAEHM@Z) ...