Question

I’m a Java programmer and I’m learning c++ 11 which I like a lot. I really think it’s great but I’m missing the notion of annotation in this language.

First, is there something close to Java style annotation in the standard ? I think there’s not after my research.

What would be the closer, standard way (no compiler extensions), to “simulate” a Java style annotation in c++ ?

And please don’t mention the c++ 11 override annotation. I mean user defined annotations.

Answer 1

There is nothing like annotations in standard C++. For alternatives, it depends on why you want to use annotations.

• one of the use of annotations in Java is to mark some methods or classes with meta-data so it can be retrieved through reflection at runtime. But reflection in standard C++ is very limited, so there is nothing like that. I haven’t had a look at boost::reflect, maybe it can be useful to you.
• another use of annotations is to have tools that intervenes at compile time to inject some code or to do checks. The tool to do this kind of stuff in C++ is the preprocessor.