Are >? or <? legitimate operators in any C++ dialect?

Question

I ran across the following lines of C++ code in a file (non-contiguous lines) that gcc 4.2.1 won't accept:

int frame = blk <? mBlkCnt-1;
mInsCnt = blk <? mBlkCnt;
mInsCnt = mInsCnt+1 <? mBlkCnt;
const int to_read = (mFileSz-byte_off) <? mBlkSz;

Both <? and >? are used in various places in the code. They appear to be a shorthand for assigning the smaller (or larger) of two values, but I've never seen this operator combination. Any ideas on what this is?

Answer 1

It's not a C++ operator, that's for sure. It almost resembles a digraph, but certainly not a valid one. In any case, a digraph, if supported, would just result in punctuation, not a whole new operator.

So, in answer to your question, perhaps this file needs to be preprocessed by some preprocessor that converts it to valid C++.

Answer 2

They're called the min and max operators and were language extensions in earlier versions of gcc.

They are no longer supported.

Answer 3

Interesting question.. A little off-topic, but still that much interesting and strange - have you ever known, that there were special symbols :> and <: ? Years ago, some keyboards haven't have the keys "[" and "]", so ":>" used to mean "]" and "<:" used to mean "[". Interesting, huh?