Scope

The scope of an identifier is the largest region of the program text in which the identifier can potentially be used to refer to its object. In C++, the object being referred to must be unique. However, the name to access the object, the identifier itself, can be reused. The meaning of the identifier depends upon the context in which the identifier is used. Scope is the general context used to distinguish the meanings of names.

The scope of an identifier is possibly noncontiguous. One of the ways that breakage occurs is when the same name is reused to declare a different entity, thereby creating a contained declarative region (inner) and a containing declarative region (outer). Thus, point of declaration is a factor affecting scope. Exploiting the possibility of a noncontiguous scope is the basis for the technique called information hiding.

The concept of scope that exists in C was expanded and refined in C++. The following table shows the kinds of scopes and the minor differences in terminology.

In all declarations, the identifier is in scope before the initializer. The following example demonstrates this:

int x;
void f() {
  int x = x;
}

The x declared in function f() has local scope, not global scope.

Related information

• Namespaces (C++ only)