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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T13:25:56+00:00

In our projects we decided to prefix member variables and some private/protected methods with

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In our projects we decided to prefix member variables and some private/protected methods with underscore (so with “_”).

During a discussion it was claimed that this is discouraged to do because of some incompatibilities with some compilers/linkers on some platforms. As we want to be a portable as possible I’d like to be sure.

I also reckon that prefixing globals with underscores in C can be a problem.

Does the same apply to C++-linkage and if so, in which cases (platforms/compilers/linkers)?

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  1. Editorial Team

    From the C++03 standard: §17.4.3.1.2/1

    Certain sets of names and function signatures are always reserved to the implementation:

    • Each name that contains a double underscore (__) or begins with an underscore followed by an upper-case letter (2.11) is reserved to the implementation for any use.

    • Each name that begins with an underscore is reserved to the implementation for use as a name in the global namespace.

    The equivalent text is present in C++11 §17.6.4.3.2/1

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