Voldemort type

English

Etymology

Named after Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels, who is typically called "He Who Must Not Be Named" or "You-Know-Who" by other characters, as he magically enforces a ban on his name being spoken.

Noun

Voldemort type (plural Voldemort types)

1. (programming) A data type that cannot be named.
   • 2012 May 7, Walter Bright, “Voldemort Types In D”, in Dr Dobb's‎^[1]:

     RandomNumberGenerator becomes a type that is inside generator's scope. It is simply not visible outside of generator. It cannot be named — hence it's a Voldemort Type.

   • 2016 May 23, Steve Schveighoffer, “Have your Voldemort types, and keep your disk space too!”, in Steve Schveighoffer's Blog‎^[2]:

     A recent issue I discovered (and no doubt has been encountered before) is that using Voldemort types in D can result in insane symbol bloat.

Further reading

• Voldemort types – D Wiki