Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4: Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) | ||
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GCC provides three magic variables which hold the name of the current function, as a string. The first of these is __func__, which is part of the C99 standard:
The identifier __func__ is implicitly declared by the translator as if, immediately following the opening brace of each function definition, the declaration
static const char __func__[] = "function-name"; |
__FUNCTION__ is another name for __func__. Older versions of GCC recognize only this name. However, it is not standardized. For maximum portability, we recommend you use __func__, but provide a fallback definition with the preprocessor:
#if __STDC_VERSION__ < 199901L # if __GNUC__ >= 2 # define __func__ __FUNCTION__ # else # define __func__ "<unknown>" # endif #endif |
In C, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ is yet another name for __func__. However, in C++, __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ contains the type signature of the function as well as its bare name. For example, this program:
extern "C" { extern int printf (char *, ...); } class a { public: void sub (int i) { printf ("__FUNCTION__ = %s\n", __FUNCTION__); printf ("__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ = %s\n", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__); } }; int main (void) { a ax; ax.sub (0); return 0; } |
gives this output:
__FUNCTION__ = sub __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ = void a::sub(int) |
These identifiers are not preprocessor macros. In GCC 3.3 and earlier, in C only, __FUNCTION__ and __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ were treated as string literals; they could be used to initialize char arrays, and they could be concatenated with other string literals. GCC 3.4 and later treat them as variables, like __func__. In C++, __FUNCTION__ and __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ have always been variables.