explicit keyword

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What does the explicit keyword in C++ mean?

what does the keyword explicit mean?

It is a parental warning, indicating there is inappropriate content in the constructor. — James McNellis, Feb 13 '11 at 08:04
Duplicate of [What does the explicit keyword in C++ mean?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/121162/what-does-the-explicit-keyword-in-c-mean) — James McNellis, Feb 13 '11 at 08:04

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 13 '11 at 08:07

C++ constructors that have just one parameter automatically perform implicit type conversion. For example, if you pass an int when the constructor expects a string pointer parameter, the compiler will add the code it must have to convert the int to a string pointer. However, you might not always want this automatic behavior.

You can add explicit to the constructor declaration to prevent implicit conversions. This forces the code to either use a parameter of the correct type, or cast the parameter to the correct type. That is, if the cast is not visibly expressed in code, an error will result.

explicit (C++)

explicit keyword

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