Question

Just got started w/Android on my Win 7 box after a hiatus following my first attempt.

In playing with the XML layout I see that the referencing convention defined are of the following forms

• @[+][package:]type:name
• ?[package:][type:]name

I know name is probably the identifier for the resource referenced, and the rest of each string is probably a qualifier E.g. @+id/myTextView

Here, myTextView is a name defined in another file in the same package (I think)

Specifically, what do the symbols ‘+’, and ‘?’ signify?

Answer 1

From Android’s documentation:

The at-symbol (@) at the beginning of
the string indicates that the XML
parser should parse and expand the
rest of the ID string and identify it
as an ID resource.

The plus-symbol (+) means that this is
a new resource name that must be
created and added to our resources (in
the R.java file)