Friday, December 2, 2011

Identifiers and keywords


IDENTIFIERS AND KEYWORDS
Identifiers can be defined as the name of the variables and some other program elements     using the combination of the following characters.
      Alphabets      : a . . . z, A . . . Z
      Numerals       : 0 . . . 9
      Underscore    : _
Special characters   All characters other then listed as alphabets, numerals and underscore, are treated as special characters. For example, [  ] , blank space,(  ) etc.
  In C++ language, upper case and lower case letters are distinct and hence there are 52 letters in all. A variable should not begin with a digit. C++ does not set a maximum length for an identifier. For some compilers, only the first ‘n’ characters of an identifier are treated as significant, where n is some fixed value defined in the reference manual of the compiler.
Some examples of valid identifiers are as follows:
My_name
i
I
h_Love
Note that second and third identifiers i and I are distinct and that the underscore_ character is counted as a letter. Some example of invalid identifiers are :
3ab                   -  variable begins with a digit                              -  inadmissible
A () test          -   use of special characters                                    -  inadmissible   
Gross salary  -   space between characters of a single variable -  inadmissible
Keywords  The keywords are also identifiers but cannot be user defined since they are reserved words. The following words are reserved for use as keywords. We should not choose them as variables or identifiers. It is mandatory that all the keywords. We should be in lower case letters.

   asm         continue          float          new           signed           try
   auto        default             for             operator     sizeof           typedef  
   break       delete              friend         private       static            union            
   case         do                   goto          protected    struct           unsigned
   catch       double              if               public         switch          virtual
   char         else                 inline        register        template      void
   class        enum               int             return         this               volatile
   const       extern              long           short           throw          while
         

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