&simi

[Anonymous]

As I was studying for the exam, I came across a sample question that wanted to know if the following code would compile:
int i = &simi;
According to the test the answer to the question is true, but I just wanted to know what &simi is and why it is true.
Thanks,
Brian

[Cameron Park]

According to RHE, the only character that may begin an identifier is $, _, and both upper and lower case letters. I suspect the question was testing you on the difference between C++ and Java. In C++, &someIdentifier is the numerical address of the variable someIdentifier and is also an int. But Java does not support manipulations of pointers, and & has no special meaning in Java. So, it should not compile.

[Valentin Crettaz]

HI,
may I add something to this ?
I came across the same question and I, first, did not really understand the idea behind it. But if you look carefully at the comment in the answer, it "says" that the "&simi;" is in fact supposed to be a ~i; which is the bitwise inversion operator.
I think the author of that test mistyped the question and did not have in mind to make the difference between C/C++ and Java clear.
To resume, I think that &simi; should in fact be ∼i which is a way to encode the ~ character independently of the program that reads the file...
Does this make sense ?
Hope it help