Type qualifier

In the C, C++, and D programming languages, a type qualifier is a keyword that is applied to a type, resulting in a qualified type. For example, const int is a qualified type representing a constant integer, while int is the corresponding unqualified type, simply an integer. In D these are known as type constructors, by analogy with constructors in object-oriented programming.

Type qualifiers are a way of expressing additional information about a value through the type system, and ensuring correctness in the use of the data. Type qualifiers are not generally used outside the C/C++ family of languages: many languages have a notion of constants, but express this by the name binding being constant (a "variable that doesn't vary"), rather than through the type system; see alternatives, below.

As of 2014^[update] and C11, there are four type qualifiers in standard C: const (C89), volatile (C89), restrict (C99) and _Atomic (C11) – the latter has a private name to avoid clashing with user-defined names. The first two of these, const and volatile, are also present in C++, and are the only type qualifiers in C++. Thus in C++ the term "cv-qualified type" (for const and volatile) is often used for "qualified type", while the terms "c-qualified type" and "v-qualified type" are used when only one of the qualifiers is relevant.

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