[c++] What's the difference between __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __FUNCTION__, __func__?

What's the difference between __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __FUNCTION__, __func__, and where are they documented? How do I decide which one to use?

__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ handles C++ features: classes, namespaces, templates and overload

main.cpp

#include <iostream>

namespace N {
    class C {
        public:
            template <class T>
            static void f(int i) {
                (void)i;
                std::cout << "__func__            " << __func__ << std::endl
                          << "__FUNCTION__        " << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl
                          << "__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ " << __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
            }
            template <class T>
            static void f(double f) {
                (void)f;
                std::cout << "__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ " << __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
            }
    };
}

int main() {
    N::C::f<char>(1);
    N::C::f<void>(1.0);
}

Compile and run:

g++ -ggdb3 -O0 -std=c++11 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -o main.out main.cpp
./main.out

Output:

__func__            f
__FUNCTION__        f
__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ static void N::C::f(int) [with T = char]
__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ static void N::C::f(double) [with T = void]

You may also be interested in stack traces with function names: print call stack in C or C++

Tested in Ubuntu 19.04, GCC 8.3.0.

C++20 std::source_location::function_name

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2019/p1208r5.pdf went into C++20, so we have yet another way to do it.

The documentation says:

constexpr const char* function_name() const noexcept;

6 Returns: If this object represents a position in the body of a function, returns an implementation-defined NTBS that should correspond to the function name. Otherwise, returns an empty string.

where NTBS means "Null Terminated Byte String".

I'll give it a try when support arrives to GCC, GCC 9.1.0 with g++-9 -std=c++2a still doesn't support it.

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/source_location claims usage will be like:

#include <iostream>
#include <string_view>
#include <source_location>
 
void log(std::string_view message,
         const std::source_location& location std::source_location::current()
) {
    std::cout << "info:"
              << location.file_name() << ":"
              << location.line() << ":"
              << location.function_name() << " "
              << message << '\n';
}
 
int main() {
    log("Hello world!");
}

Possible output:

info:main.cpp:16:main Hello world!

so note how this returns the caller information, and is therefore perfect for usage in logging, see also: Is there a way to get function name inside a C++ function?

For those, who wonder how it goes in VS.

MSVC 2015 Update 1, cl.exe version 19.00.24215.1:

#include <iostream>

template<typename X, typename Y>
struct A
{
  template<typename Z>
  static void f()
  {
    std::cout << "from A::f():" << std::endl
      << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl
      << __func__ << std::endl
      << __FUNCSIG__ << std::endl;
  }
};

void main()
{
  std::cout << "from main():" << std::endl
    << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl
    << __func__ << std::endl
    << __FUNCSIG__ << std::endl << std::endl;

  A<int, float>::f<bool>();
}

output:

from main():
main
main
int __cdecl main(void)

from A::f():
A<int,float>::f
f
void __cdecl A<int,float>::f<bool>(void)

Using of __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ triggers undeclared identifier error, as expected.

Despite not fully answering the original question, this is probably what most people googling this wanted to see.

For GCC:

$ cat test.cpp 
#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    std::cout << __func__ << std::endl
              << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl
              << __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
}
$ g++ test.cpp 
$ ./a.out 
main
main
int main(int, char**)

__func__ is documented in the C++0x standard at section 8.4.1. In this case it's a predefined function local variable of the form:

static const char __func__[] = "function-name ";

where "function name" is implementation specfic. This means that whenever you declare a function, the compiler will add this variable implicitly to your function. The same is true of __FUNCTION__ and __PRETTY_FUNCTION__. Despite their uppercasing, they aren't macros. Although __func__ is an addition to C++0x

g++ -std=c++98 ....

will still compile code using __func__.

__PRETTY_FUNCTION__ and __FUNCTION__ are documented here http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.5.1/gcc/Function-Names.html#Function-Names. __FUNCTION__ is just another name for __func__. __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ is the same as __func__ in C but in C++ it contains the type signature as well.