Can you start a class name with a numeric digit?

Rules for identifier names in C++ are:

  1. It can not start with a number
  2. Can be composed of letters, numbers, underscore, universal character names1 and implementation defined characters
  3. Can not be a keyword.

The sections in the C++ draft standard that cover this are 2.11 Identifiers which includes the following grammar:

identifier:
  identifier-nondigit            <- Can only start with a non-digit
  identifier identifier-nondigit <- Next two rules allows for subsequent 
  identifier digit               <-  characters to be those outlined in 2 above
identifier-nondigit:
  nondigit                       <- a-z, A-Z and _ 
  universal-character-name
  other implementation-defined characters
[...]

and 2.12 Keywords explains all the identifier reserved for use as keywords.

Finally, the following names are also reserved:

  1. Names that contain a double underscore __, or start with either an underscore followed by an uppercase letter (like _Apple) in any scope,
  2. Names that start with an underscore in the global namespace (like _apple in the global namespace) are reserved.

The section that covers this in the draft standard is 17.6.4.3.2. We can find a rationale for why these are reserved from Rationale for International Standard—Programming Languages—C which says:

[...]This gives a name space for writing the numerous behind-the-scenes non-external macros and functions a library needs to do its job properly[...]

In C++ this also applies to name mangling as this example shows.


Footnotes

  • 1. Allowed universal characters

The universal characters that are allowed is covered in Annex E.1:

E.1 Ranges of characters allowed [charname.allowed]

00A8, 00AA, 00AD,

00AF, 00B2-00B5, 00B7-00BA, 00BC-00BE, 00C0-00D6, 00D8-00F6, 00F8-00FF

0100-167F, 1681-180D, 180F-1FFF 200B-200D, 202A-202E, 203F-2040, 2054,

2060-206F 2070-218F, 2460-24FF, 2776-2793, 2C00-2DFF, 2E80-2FFF

3004-3007, 3021-302F, 3031-303F

3040-D7FF F900-FD3D, FD40-FDCF,

FDF0-FE44, FE47-FFFD

10000-1FFFD, 20000-2FFFD, 30000-3FFFD, 40000-4FFFD, 50000-5FFFD, 60000-6FFFD, 70000-7FFFD, 80000-8FFFD, 90000-9FFFD, A0000-AFFFD, B0000-BFFFD, C0000-CFFFD, D0000-DFFFD, E0000-EFFFD


The simple answer is no. For you example why not call it OneDArray?


Since, surprisingly, I wasn't able to find a duplicate, or more general version, of this question, here is an answer based on what the Standard (C++11) says.

First of all, by §9/1, a class name is an identifier (or a simple-template-id in the case of a template specialization, but a simple-template-id is also composed of identifiers).

§2.11 defines what a valid identifier is. It first introduces a few basic concepts:

A digit is one of these: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A nondigit is one of these: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
A universal-character-name is a sequence of type \unnnn or \Unnnnnnnn (where each n is a hexadecimal digit)

The Standard then defines an identifier-nondigit as

  • either a nondigit
  • or a universal-character-name
  • or an implementation-defined special character(&ddagger;)

Finally, identifier is defined recursively as

identifier:
  identifier-nondigit
  identifier identifier-nondigit
  identifier digit

Summary: In other words, an identifier must start with a (non-digit!) alphabetical character, which can be followed by anything made up of alphanumerical characters, underscores and \unnnn-like character references. Anything else is implementation-specific.


(&ddagger;) Whether any are supported depends on your compiler, and using them generally means you lose portability to other compilers or compiler versions.


Names in C++ must start with a 'letter', where letter is all the upper and lower case 'A-Z, a-z'. '_' also counts as a 'letter'. It can then be followed by any combination of letters and digits.

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