C++FILT(1)

📦 version 2.47, in arch rolling

💅 NAME 💅

c++filt — demangle C++ and Java symbols (aka: turn the unreadable garbage back into names you can actually read, you're welcome 🫶)

so real quick, this page lives in the GNU Development Tools manual, and it's your bestie for when a linker error looks like someone fell asleep on the keyboard ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

c++filt [-_|--strip-underscore]
        [-n|--no-strip-underscore]
        [-p|--no-params]
        [-t|--types]
        [-i|--no-verbose]
        [-r|--no-recurse-limit]
        [-R|--recurse-limit]
        [-s format|--format=format]
        [--help]  [--version]  [symbol...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the lore 💀 C++ and Java let you do function overloading, which means you can have a bajillion functions with the exact same name, as long as each one takes parameters of different types. iconic, but how does the compiler tell them apart? it encodes them into a low-level assembler name that uniquely identifies each version. that process is called mangling. and c++filt [1] does the inverse mapping — it decodes (demangles) those low-level names back into user-level names so that actual humans can read them 💖

every alphanumeric word (and by that we mean made of letters, digits, underscores, dollars, or periods) that shows up in the input is a potential mangled name. if the name decodes into a C++ name, then the C++ name replaces the low-level name in the output — otherwise the original word just gets printed as-is. the way that this works means you can yeet an entire assembler source file full of mangled names through c++filt and get the same source file back with demangled names instead. slay ✨

you can also use c++filt to decipher individual symbols by passing them on the command line, like:

c++filt <symbol>

if you give it no symbol arguments, c++filt reads symbol names from the standard input instead. all the results get printed on the standard output. now, the difference between reading names from the command line versus reading names from standard input is a whole thing: command-line arguments are expected to be just mangled names, and no checking is performed to separate them from surrounding text. so for example:

c++filt -n _Z1fv

will work and demangle the name to "f()", whereas:

c++filt -n _Z1fv,

will not work. (note the extra comma at the end of the mangled name which makes it invalid 🙈). this command, however, will work:

echo _Z1fv, | c++filt -n

and will display "f()," — i.e., the demangled name followed by a trailing comma. why? because when names are read from standard input, it's expected that they might be part of an assembler source file where there might be extra, extraneous characters trailing after a mangled name. for example:

    .type   _Z1fv, @function

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -_, --strip-underscore — on some systems, both the C and C++ compilers put an underscore in front of every name. for example, the C name "foo" gets the low-level name "_foo". this option removes that initial underscore. and whether c++filt removes the underscore by default is target dependent — so like, it depends, bestie 🎀
  • -n, --no-strip-underscore — do not remove the initial underscore. no cap, that's it.
  • -p, --no-params — when demangling the name of a function, don't display the types of the function's parameters. short and sweet.
  • -t, --types — attempt to demangle types as well as function names. this is disabled by default since mangled types are normally only used internally in the compiler, and they can get confused with non-mangled names 👀 for example, a function called "a" treated as a mangled type name would be demangled to "signed char". wild, right?
  • -i, --no-verbose — do not include implementation details (if any) in the demangled output. keep it clean 💅
  • -r, -R, --recurse-limit, --no-recurse-limit, --recursion-limit, --no-recursion-limit — enables or disables a limit on the amount of recursion performed whilst demangling strings. since the name mangling formats allow for an infinite level of recursion, it's possible to create strings whose decoding will exhaust the amount of stack space available on the host machine, triggering a memory fault 💀 the limit tries to prevent this from happening by restricting recursion to 2048 levels of nesting.

the default is for this limit to be enabled, but disabling it may be necessary in order to demangle truly complicated names. note however that if the recursion limit is disabled then stack exhaustion is possible, and any bug reports about such an event will be rejected 😭 so like, don't come crying to us.

the -r option is a synonym for the --no-recurse-limit option. the -R option is a synonym for the --recurse-limit option.

  • -s format, --format=format — c++filt can decode various methods of mangling, used by different compilers. the argument to this option selects which method it uses:
    • "auto" — automatic selection based on executable (the default method)
    • "gnu" — the one used by the GNU C++ compiler (g++)
    • "lucid" — the one used by the Lucid compiler (lcc)
    • "arm" — the one specified by the C++ Annotated Reference Manual
    • "hp" — the one used by the HP compiler (aCC)
    • "edg" — the one used by the EDG compiler
    • "gnu-v3" — the one used by the GNU C++ compiler (g++) with the V3 ABI.
    • "java" — the one used by the GNU Java compiler (gcj)
    • "gnat" — the one used by the GNU Ada compiler (GNAT).
  • --help — print a summary of the options to c++filt and exit. 🫶
  • --version — print the version number of c++filt and exit.
  • @file — read command-line options from file. the options read are inserted in place of the original @file option. if file does not exist, or cannot be read, then the option will be treated literally, and not removed.

options in file are separated by whitespace. a whitespace character may be included in an option by surrounding the entire option in either single or double quotes. any character (including a backslash) may be included by prefixing the character to be included with a backslash. the file may itself contain additional @file options; any such options will be processed recursively. it's giving inception 🌀

🌈 FOOTNOTES 🌈

  1. MS-DOS does not allow "+" characters in file names, so on MS-DOS this program is named CXXFILT. the more you know 💫

🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

the Info entries for binutils. that's the whole list, go read them iykyk 📚

Copyright (c) 1991-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 💅✨ this masterpiece is from binutils-2.47, dated 2026-08-31 — go demangle something iconic, mwah 🫶💖

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