What does "§ 27.7.3.6.2/1" refers to?

Question

When I read some questions, I find people prefer to use something like "§ 27.7.3.6.2/1 [ostream.inserters.arithmetic]" to describe their question.I believe it has something related to C++.

Here is the link address of that question: Formatted output arithmetic inserters

What I want to ask is: What does "§ 27.7.3.6.2/1" refer to? Does it mean a book or something else? If it is a book, please tell me the name of that book.

Answer 1

They're refering to the C++ standard.

Answer 2

When you're talking about standardised languages like C and C++, it generally refers to the section in the standard (ISO C++ in this case). § 27.7.3.6.2/1 means section 27.7.3.6.2, part 1 of that section.

In C++11, that particular section is:

27.7.3.6.2 Arithmetic inserters [ostream.inserters.arithmetic]

and part 1 of it states:

1 Effects: The classes num_get<> and num_put<> handle locale-dependent numeric formatting and parsing. These inserter functions use the imbued locale value to perform numeric formatting. When val is of type bool, long, unsigned long, long long, unsigned long long, double, long double, or const void*, the formatting conversion occurs as if it performed the following code fragment:

... and so on.

You can get the final versions of the standards (at a cost usually) from your local standards body though you can generally get the final drafts for free on the net that are close to the final versions (although, to be honest, I'm not entirely certain as to the copyright status of these drafts).