How does an extern "C" declaration work?

Question

I'm taking a programming languages course and we're talking about the extern "C" declaration.

How does this declaration work at a deeper level other than "it interfaces C and C++"? How does this affect the bindings that take place in the program as well?

Answer 1

extern "C" is used to ensure that the symbols following are not mangled (decorated).

---

Example:

Let's say we have the following code in a file called test.cpp:

extern "C" {
  int foo() {
    return 1;
  }
}

int bar() {
  return 1;
}

If you run gcc -c test.cpp -o test.o

Take a look at the symbols names:

00000010 T _Z3barv

00000000 T foo

foo() keeps its name.