Why is there a case sensitivity problem with org mode source block tags?

Question

So I am entering source code into org documents by using source code blocks such as:

#+BEGIN_SRC C++
  #include <iostream>

  using namespace std;

  int main() {
      cout << "Hello World" << endl;
      return 0;
  }

#+END_SRC

Notice that the language tag is 'C++'. When I use uppercase 'C', there is no syntax highlighting but C-c C-c will allow me to evaluate the code block properly. However, if I try to edit the block by doing C-c ' then I get the error "No such language mode: C++-mode".

If I switch the language tag to 'c++', then I get syntax highlighting and I am able to use C-c ' to edit the source block but then if I try C-c C-c to evaluate the source block I get the error "No org-babel-execute function for c++!"

I have looked in the ob-c.el and org-src.el source code and I think I have found where I could fix it. Although I don't want to depart from the official source I wanted to see if I was on the right track. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to load those changes once I have made them, or maybe it is that the change didn't do what I thought =) All I did was modify the code in the emacs/lisp directory and delete the .elc version of the file in the hopes that it would get re-compiled the next time emacs started.

Is this a true bug or am I missing something? This is version 24.3.1

Thanks!

Answer 1

Looking a bit more closely in the ob-c.el code and it looks like it will also respond to 'cpp' which also works for org-src.el. So using the 'cpp' tag gives syntax highlighting and source execution.