Ordering of Storage Attributes

There is no prescribed ordering of the various keywords and constructions that have anything to do with storage. The closest to a standard order, of sorts, is given by the compiler’s own practice when listing them

• in function prototypes written to standard output because of the /Zg option
• and in the message text for various warnings and errors (C2059, C2720, C4038, C4091 and C4518).

Note that the compiler’s lists for these purposes need not show all an object’s storage attributes, just a selection. The order however is always the same.

Storage Modifiers

First are the keywords that the compiler treats formally as storage modifiers, plus virtual:

• __forceinline or inline
• virtual
• mutable
• explicit
• friend (if not /Zg)
• __sealed
• __abstract
• __event
• __value
• __gc
• __nogc

Note that what is shown may have been specified differently: inline may have originated as __inline, __sealed as __declspec (sealed), and __gc as __declspec (managed) or __declspec (__managed).

Storage Class

Next come the keywords that the compiler treats as storage classes. They are mutually exclusive.

• extern, static, auto, register or typedef

Extended Attributes

The list ends with extended attributes as arguments in one __declspec:

• dllimport
• dllexport
• naked
• thread
• allocate("segname")
• uuid("ComObjectGUID")
• nothrow
• selectany
• novtable