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Cpp demangle

A crate for demangling C++ symbols

From gimli-rs·Updated May 24, 2026·View on GitHub·

This crate can parse a C++ “mangled” linker symbol name into a Rust value describing what the name refers to: a variable, a function, a virtual table, etc. The description type implements functions such as `demangle()`, producing human-readable text describing the mangled name. Debuggers and profilers can use this crate to provide more meaningful output. The project is written primarily in Rust, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 license, first published in 2016. Key topics include: demangle, itanium, linker-symbol, rust.

cpp_demangle: a C++ linker symbol demangler

Build Status

This crate can parse a C++ “mangled” linker symbol name into a Rust value
describing what the name refers to: a variable, a function, a virtual table,
etc. The description type implements functions such as demangle(),
producing human-readable text describing the mangled name. Debuggers and
profilers can use this crate to provide more meaningful output.

C++ requires the compiler to choose names for linker symbols consistently across
compilation units, so that two compilation units that have seen the same
declarations can pair up definitions in one unit with references in another.
Almost all platforms other than Microsoft Windows follow the
Itanium C++ ABI's rules for this.

For example, suppose a C++ compilation unit has the definition:

namespace space {
  int foo(int x, int y) { return x+y; }
}

The Itanium C++ ABI specifies that the linker symbol for that function must be
named _ZN5space3fooEii. This crate can parse that name into a Rust value
representing its structure. That Rust value can be demangle()d to the
string space::foo(int, int), which is more meaningful to the C++
developer.

Usage

Add cpp_demangle to your crate's Cargo.toml:

toml
[dependencies] cpp_demangle = "0.5.1"

And then demangle some C++ symbols!

rust
extern crate cpp_demangle; use cpp_demangle::Symbol; use std::string::ToString; let mangled = b"_ZN5space3fooEibc"; let sym = Symbol::new(&mangled[..]) .expect("Could not parse mangled symbol!"); let demangled = sym.demangle().unwrap(); assert_eq!(demangled, "space::foo(int, bool, char)");

no_std Support

cpp_demangle may be configured for working in no_std environments that still
have allocation support via the alloc crate. This is nightly rust only, at the
moment, since the alloc crate's collections aren't stabilized.

Disable the "std" feature, and enable the "alloc" feature:

toml
[dependencies] cpp_demangle = { version = "0.5.1", default-features = false, features = ["alloc"] }

Documentation

Documentation on docs.rs

Example programs:

  • A c++filt clone.

    Install it locally with this command:

    cargo install cpp_demangle --example cppfilt
    

Implementation Status

Work is ongoing. While cpp_demangle can parse every mangled symbol in
libiberty's demangler's test suite (the canonical Itanium C++ symbol demangler
used by GNU tools such as c++filt), it does not format all of them
character-for-character identically. I'm working on fixing that ;)

Despite that, I believe cpp_demangle is fairly robust. I've been
running AFL on cpp_demangle overnight and it hasn't found any panics for a
long time now (and never found any crashes -- thanks Rust!).

License

Licensed under either of

at your option.

Contribution

See CONTRIBUTING.md for hacking.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from gimli-rs/cpp_demangle via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/24/2026