What are qualified-id/name and unqualified-id/name?
A qualified name is one that has some sort of indication of where it belongs, e.g. a class specification, namespace specification, etc. An unqualified name is one that isn't qualified.
Read James McNellis' answer here:
What is a nested name specifier?
Given:
struct A {
struct B {
void F();
};
};
-
A
is an unqualified-id. -
::A
is a qualified-id but has no nested-name-specifier. -
A::B
is a qualified-id andA::
is a nested-name-specifier. -
::A::B
is a qualified-id andA::
is a nested-name-specifier. -
A::B::F
is a qualified-id and bothB::
andA::B::
are nested-name-specifiers. -
::A::B::F
is a qualified-id and bothB::
andA::B::
are nested-name-specifiers.
A qualified name is one that specifies a scope.
Consider the following sample program, the references to cout
and endl
are qualified names:
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::cout<<"Hello world!"<<std::endl;
return 0;
}
Notice that the use of cout
and endl
began with std::
. These make them Qualified names.
If we brought cout and endl into scope by a using declaration or directive*(such as using namespace std;
), and used just cout
and endl
just by themselves , they would have been unqualified names, because they would lack the std::
.