Can you start a class name with a numeric digit?

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Rules for identifier names in C++ are:

  1. It can not start with a number
  2. Can be composed of letters, numbers, underscore, universal character names1 and implementation defined characters
  3. Can not be a keyword.

The sections in the C++ draft standard that cover this are 2.11 Identifiers which includes the following grammar:

identifier:
  identifier-nondigit            <- Can only start with a non-digit
  identifier identifier-nondigit <- Next two rules allows for subsequent 
  identifier digit               <-  characters to be those outlined in 2 above
identifier-nondigit:
  nondigit                       <- a-z, A-Z and _ 
  universal-character-name
  other implementation-defined characters
[...]

and 2.12 Keywords explains all the identifier reserved for use as keywords.

Finally, the following names are also reserved:

  1. Names that contain a double underscore __, or start with either an underscore followed by an uppercase letter (like _Apple) in any scope,
  2. Names that start with an underscore in the global namespace (like _apple in the global namespace) are reserved.

The section that covers this in the draft standard is 17.6.4.3.2. We can find a rationale for why these are reserved from Rationale for International Standard—Programming Languages—C which says:

[…]This gives a name space for writing the numerous behind-the-scenes non-external macros and functions a library needs to do its job properly[…]

In C++ this also applies to name mangling as this example shows.

Footnotes

  • 1. Allowed universal characters

The universal characters that are allowed is covered in Annex E.1:

E.1 Ranges of characters allowed [charname.allowed]

00A8, 00AA, 00AD,

00AF, 00B2-00B5, 00B7-00BA, 00BC-00BE, 00C0-00D6, 00D8-00F6, 00F8-00FF

0100-167F, 1681-180D, 180F-1FFF 200B-200D, 202A-202E, 203F-2040, 2054,

2060-206F 2070-218F, 2460-24FF, 2776-2793, 2C00-2DFF, 2E80-2FFF

3004-3007, 3021-302F, 3031-303F

3040-D7FF F900-FD3D, FD40-FDCF,

FDF0-FE44, FE47-FFFD

10000-1FFFD, 20000-2FFFD, 30000-3FFFD,
40000-4FFFD, 50000-5FFFD, 60000-6FFFD, 70000-7FFFD, 80000-8FFFD,
90000-9FFFD, A0000-AFFFD, B0000-BFFFD, C0000-CFFFD, D0000-DFFFD,
E0000-EFFFD

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