What C ++ style syntax refers to

Question

I recently came across a snippet similar to the following:

int a <:20:>; int b; void foo() <% printf("Hello world"); a <: ++b :> = 440; %> 

What is C ++ style / syntax? Thanks for your reply.

Answer 1

They are called digraphs :

 Digraph Equivalent <: [ :> ] <% { %> } %: # 

They are supported because in some countries their keyboards may not have multiple characters, so they can combine keys such as < and : to form the equivalent [ and so on. The wikipedia entry also describes trigraphs .