A facile self-doping and self-templating strategy to prepare N, S co-doped hierarchical porous carbon nanorods (NSCs) via direct carbonization of an easy-synthesis protic salt is developed. The protic salt of 5-carboxybenzene-1,3-diamine sulfate [DABA][2HSO(4)] behaves as a multirole precursor, serving as the carbon source and heteroatom dopants as well as the pore-forming agent during carbonization. The pore structure parameters and chemical compositions of NSCs can be simply tuned by adjusting the carbonization temperature. The typical NSC carbonized at 900 degrees C (denoted as NSC-900) is endowed with large surface area of 1543 m(2) g(-1), nanorod morphology, unique hierarchical porosity (consisting of ultramicro-, supermicro- and mesopores), and high content of heteroatom functionalities (5.80 at.% N and 0.44 at.% S). As a result, the NSC-900 electrode exhibits excellent charge storage capacity with a high gravimetric capacitance of 282 F g(-1) at 1.0 A g(-1) and long-tem cycling life with 96.0% retention after 10000 cycles in KOH electrolyte. Besides, the assembled NSC-900/MnO2//NSC-900 asymmetric super-capacitor with a wide operating voltage of 1.8 V delivers a large energy density of 39.15Wh Kg(-1) with the corresponding power density of 901 Wkg(-1) in Na2SO4 electrolyte. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.