In programming languages, particularly the compiled ones like C, C++, and D, linkage describes how names can or can not refer to the same entity throughout the whole program or one single translation unit. The static keyword is used in C to restrict the visibility of a function or variable to its translation unit. This is also valid in C++. (C++ 98/03 deprecated this usage in favor of anonymous namespaces, but is no longer deprecated in C++ 11.) Also, C++ implicitly treats any const namespace-scope variable as having internal linkage unless it is explicitly declared extern, unlike C.