What does ^ after a type mean in c++?

Question

I have some c++ code with function return types declared as string^ or IEnumerable<String^>^, what does that mean?

edits: c#->c++/cli

Answer 1

It doesn't mean anything in C#. You're looking at source code for C++/CLI, not C#.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/CLI for a brief introduction.

The carat symbol basically means "this is a GC-tracked reference".