In c++ what does a tilde “~” before a function name signify?

Question

 template 
 class Stack
 {
 public:
    Stack(int = 10) ; 
    ~Stack() { delete [] stackPtr ; }  //<--- What does the \"~\" signify?
    int push(         


        

Answer 1

As others have noted, in the instance you are asking about it is the destructor for class Stack.

But taking your question exactly as it appears in the title:

In c++ what does a tilde “~” before a function name signify?

there is another situation. In any context except immediately before the name of a class (which is the destructor context), ~ is the one's complement (or bitwise not) operator. To be sure it does not come up very often, but you can imagine a case like

if (~getMask()) { ...

which looks similar, but has a very different meaning.