这个“表情符号代码”有什么作用？

Question

I think this is C code, but I'm not entirely sure. I found it in a few persons' online signatures, and in SO chat once. I tried compiling it, but received a really hard to read error taking issue with the unusual characters presented.

Does it do anything? I have no idea what to do with this in my head.

enum ಠ_ಠ {°□°╰=1, °Д°╰, ಠ益ಠ╰};
void ┻━┻︵​╰(ಠ_ಠ ⚠) {exit((int)⚠);}

Answer 1

Let's deobfuscate this.

enum eyes {a=1, b, c};
void f(eyes e) {exit((int)e);}

So basically it defines a function that aborts the program execution with an exit code from an enum type.

It won't work in C though.

Answer 2

It's not valid C, but it might be accepted by a tolerant C++ compiler. If so, it doesn't "do" anything; it only declares a datatype and defines a function.

In C++, class , union , struct and enum declare typenames. In C, you need to use a typedef to achieve approximately the same effect (approximately, because you can't declare a typename in a scope in C). So the line:

enum ಠ_ಠ {°□°╰=1, °Д°╰, ಠ益ಠ╰};

declares a type called ಠ_ಠ , which is an enum with three members corresponding to constants 1 , 2 and 3 . (Note 1)

Since ಠ_ಠ is a typename, it can then be used as such. In particular, you can declare the function ┻━┻︵​╰ (Note 2):

void ┻━┻︵​╰(ಠ_ಠ ⚠) {exit((int)⚠);}

which takes a ಠ_ಠ as an argument named ⚠ (Note 3), casts it to an int and then calls the standard C library function exit with that value.

---

Notes

1. The enum typename is fine, but all of the member names include characters not on the list of valid identifier characters in the current C++ standard. A tolerant C++ compiler might allow them as an extension. (However, neither clang nor gcc do.) In particular, the degree symbol U+00B0 ° is not a valid identifier character, and neither is U+2570 ╰ , the light arc up and right box drawing character. In fact, none of the box drawing characters are valid identifier characters, including the white square U+25A1 □ .

2. Most of those characters are not valid identifier characters. There are six characters in that name: three heavy box drawing characters, a vertical left parenthesis, a zero-width space, and a light box drawing character. Curiously, the zero-width space is a valid identifier character even though it is more or less invisible. The rotated parenthesis is also valid, but the four box-drawing characters are not, as mentioned above.

3. The "warning sign" ⚠ is also not on the list of valid identifier characters.