declarations in include files: how do YOU feel?
Jeffrey W Percival
jwp at larry.sal.wisc.edu
Thu May 11 07:42:25 AEST 1989
I would like to find out how the "experts" feel about a coding
practice, so I don't develop a bizarre style (bizarre with respect
to the general body of usage). I hope this doesn't start a
philosophy war of some kind.
The situation is, suppose I have a bunch of routines that are packaged
into a lib.a, and there is an associated include file "lib.h" that
users need to include. Should the lib.h file contain extern declarations
for everything in lib.a, or not?
case 1: shotgun approach. declare all the routines contained in lib.a
advantage: user doesn't need to.
disadvantage: "scope" is not micro-managed. labels are in scope
everywhere, even labels not used in actual references.
case 2: "anal" approach. no declarations in lib.h. User needs
to type in the declarations in every function that makes a reference.
advantage (???): user sees declarations in same file as usage.
scope of labels is managed according to program design.
If my goal is to be portable and non-eccentric, what should I do?
--
Jeff Percival (jwp at larry.sal.wisc.edu)
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