What's the difference between including a header(.h files) and a C++ file(.cpp files)? When I create a class, I create a .h file and .cpp file. If I want to use an object of this class should I include both of these files or not? In which cases should I include the .cpp file?
What files are called, and what their contents is, are entirely convention. If you like to confuse people, you could call your header files something.b and your source files something.r - this will of course mean nothing useful to most people, and some people may think your files contain the language R rather than C++ sources. And your editor will probably not understand that it's C or C++ in files called .b - and build tools such as Make, scons, CMake, etc will probably not understand how to compile the your files without being "told". [Compilers also look a the filename extension to determine if it's supposed to compile as C++ or C, which of course will not work with "unconventional names"]
What is important is not what the files are called, but what they actually contain. A header (what most people call something.h) file should be such that it can be included anywhere, and any number of times in your project [exceptions do exist, where header files are not really meant to be included more than a single time in the entire project - for example a version.h which declares a string that describes the current version number].
A source file (what is conventionally called something.cpp, typically, should be passed to the compiler directly to be compiled, and not used as #include "something.cpp". However, it is the CONTENT that determines this, not the name of the file. It's just badly named files if you use them that way.
In summary: The compiler just reads the source file passed in, then "inserts" the #include into the stream of code that it compiles, as if it was pasted into the original source file. The compiler doesn't really care what your file names are, where they came from, or what their content is, as long as the compiler is "ok" with the compilation as a whole.
There is no difference to include .cpp and .h files from point of view of compiler. But The content of .cpp and .h is different in common case. The .cpp files is for implementation of class, functions, static objects, and the .h files is for class definition. If you include the .cpp file into another .cpp file the content is duplicated and will fail at link stage becouse the naming collisions.
What's the difference between including a header(.h files) and C++ file(.cpp files)?
Supposed the .cpp file contains some function definitions, the latter option usually doesn't work well with commonly used build systems, and ends up with multiple definition errors, when the .cpp is included by more of one translation unit.
The exception might be having inlined all of your function definitions in the .cpp file.
In the very principle it's that the C/C++ preprocessor just expands the text found in either file type into the current translation unit. The file extension doesn't play any role here.
There is no difference. Both are handled by the preprocessor as plain text for concatenation to a single file. However, including a source might have a undesirable result (multiple definitions of variables/functions). Header files are usually protected by inclusion guards (#ifndef HEADER_H or a #pragma once) to prevent duplication of their content.
Note: The compiler does it's work after preprocessing (or invokes the preprocessor before compiling).
Related
This question was posted several times on StackOverflow, but most of the answers stated something similar to ".h files are supposed to contain declarations whereas .cpp files are supposed to contain their definitions/implementation". I've noticed that simply defining functions in .h files works just fine. What's the purpose of declaring functions in .h files but defining and implementing them in .cpp files? Does it really reduce compile time? What else?
Practically: the conventions around .h files are in place so that you can safely include that file in multiple other files in your project. Header files are designed to be shared, while code files are not.
Let's take your example of defining functions or variables. Suppose your header file contains the following line:
header.h:
int x = 10;
code.cpp:
#include "header.h"
Now, if you only have one code file and one header file this probably works just fine:
g++ code.cpp -o outputFile
However, if you have two code files this breaks:
header.h:
int x = 10;
code1.cpp:
#include "header.h"
code2.cpp:
#include "header.h"
And then:
g++ code1.cpp -c (produces code1.o)
g++ code2.cpp -c (produces code2.o)
g++ code1.o code2.o -o outputFile
This breaks, specifically at the linker step, because now you have two symbols in the same executable that have the same symbol, and the linker doesn't know what's it's supposed to do with that. When you include your header in code1 you get a symbol "x" and when you include your header in code2 you get another symbol "x". The linker doesn't know your intention here, so it throws an error:
code2.o:(.data+0x0): multiple definition of `x'
code1.o:(.data+0x0): first defined here
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Which again is just the linker saying that it can't resolve the fact that you now have two symbols with the same name in the same executable.
What's the REAL difference between .h and .cpp files?
They are both fundamentally just text files. From certain perspective, their only difference is the filename.
However, many programming related tools treat the files differently depending on their name. For example, some tools will detect programming language: .c is compiled as C language, .cpp is compiled as C++ and .h is not compiled at all.
For header files, the name does not matter at all to the compiler. The name could be .h or .header or anything else, it doesn't affect how the pre processor includes it. It is however good practice to conform to a common convention in order to avoid confusion.
I've noticed that simply defining functions in .h files works just fine.
Are the functions declared non-inline? Have you ever included the header file into more than one translation unit? If you answered yes to both, then your program has been ill formed. If you didn't, then that would explain why you didn't encounter any problems.
Does it really reduce compile time?
Yes. Dividing function definitions into smaller translation units can indeed reduce the time to compile said translation units compared to compiling larger translation units.
This is because doing less work takes less time. What is important to realise is that other translation units do not need to be recompiled when only one is modified. If you only have one translation unit, then you have to compile it i.e. the program in its entirety.
Multiple translation units are also better because they can be compiled in parallel, which allows taking advantage of modern multi core hardware.
What else?
Does there need to be anything else? Having to wait a few minutes to compile your program instead of a day improves development speed drastically.
There are some other advantages too regarding organisation of files. In particular, it is quite convenient to be able to define different implementations for same function for different target systems on order to be able to support multiple platforms. With header files, you must do tricks with macros while with source files, you simply choose which files to compile.
Another use case where implementing functions in header is not an option is distributing a library without source, as some middleware providers do. You must give the headers or else your functions cannot be called, but if all your source is in the headers, then you've given up your trade secrets. Compiled sources have to be at least reverse engineered.
Keep in mind that the C++ compiler is a fairly simple beast as far as file-handling goes. All it's allowed to do is a read in a single source-code file (and, via the pre-processor, logically insert into that incoming text-stream the contents of any files that the file #includes, recursively), parse the contents, and spit out the resulting .o file.
For small programs, keeping the entire codebase in a single .cpp file (or even a single .h file) works fine, because number of lines of code that the compiler needs to load into memory are small (relative to the computer's RAM).
But imagine you are working on a monster program, with tens of millions of lines of code -- yes, such things do exist. Loading that much code into RAM at once would likely stress the capabilities of all but the most powerful computers, leading to exceedingly long compile times or even outright failure.
And even worse than that, touching any of the code in a .h file requires the recompilation of any other files that #include that .h file, either directly or indirectly -- so if all your code is in .h files, then your compiler is likely to spend a lot of time unnecessarily recompiling a lot of code that didn't actually change.
To avoid those problems, C++ lets you place your code into multiple .cpp files. Since .cpp files are (at least traditionally) never #include'd by anything, the only time your Makefile or IDE will need to recompile any given .cpp file is after you've actually modified that exact file, or a .h file it #include's.
So when you've modified a function in the 375th .cpp file out of 700 .cpp files in your program, and now you want to test your modification, the compiler only has to recompile that one .cpp file and then re-link the .o files into an executable. If OTOH you've modified a .h file, compilation might be much longer, because now the build system will have to recompile every other file that includes that .h file, directly or indirectly, just in case you changed the meaning of something those files depend on.
.cpp files also make link-time issues much easier to deal with. For example, if you want to have a global variable, defining that global variable in a .cpp file (and maybe declaring an extern for it in a .h file) is straightforward; if OTOH you want to do that in a .h file, you'll have to be very careful or you'll end up with duplicate-symbol errors from your linker, and/or subtle violations of the One Definition Rule that will come back to bite you later on.
The REAL difference is that your programming environment lists .h and .cpp files separately. And/or populates file-browser-dialogs appropriately. And/or tries to compile .cpp files into object form (but doesn't do that to .h files). And whatever, depending on which IDE / environment you use.
The second difference is that people assume that your .h files are header files, and that your .cpp files are code source files.
If you don't care about people or development environments, you can put any damn thing you want in a .h or .cpp file, and call them any thing you want. You can put your declarations in a .cpp file and call it an "include file", and your definitions in a .pas file and call it a "source file".
I have to do this kind of thing when working in a constrained environment.
Header files weren't part of the original definition of c. The world got on perfectly well without them. Opening and closing lots of header files did slow down the compilation of c, which is why we got pre-compiled header files. Pre-compiled header files do speed up the compilation and linking of source code, but not any faster than just writing assembler, or machine code, or any other thing that didn't take advantage of the co-operation of other people or a design environment.
It is useful to put declarations in a header file, and definitions in a code source file. That's why you should do that. There isn't a requirement.
Whenever you see an #include <header.h> directive, pretend that the contents of header.h is being copied and pasted right where the #include directive appears.
.cpp files get compiled to become .obj files. They have no knowledge of the existence of any other .cpp file, and are compiled individually. That's why we need to declare things before we use them - otherwise the compiler won't know whether the function we're trying to invoke exists within a different .cpp file.
We use header files to share declarations amongst multiple .cpp files to avoid having to write the same code over and over for every single .cpp file.
I am having trouble understanding an answer I saw in another post. It said that it is good practice to define a struct in a separate .h file so it can be used in other files. I think that is great and it solves my current dilemma, however I have a question about compilation and makefiles. I am only familiar with having header files that are associated with .cpp files at the moment.
Can someone explain how that implementation would look when I have a .h and no .cpp? Do I need an implementation file as well? Also, how do I link the header in a makefile? Currently I only know how to compile a .cpp & header into a .o file and link them.
Thanks, and sorry for taking us back to c++ kindergarten. This is a new revelation and seems like a good one.
You don't need a matching source file (.c or .cpp) for every header .h file.
Having header files without corresponding source files is just fine.
When you #include some header file, you can think of it as a kind of "copy and paste" operation: the preprocessor copies the content of the header file, and pastes it in the point of inclusion.
(Well, there are some details to consider here, for example the presence of a #pragma once directive or some #ifdef inclusion guard can prevent multiple inclusions of the same header file in a given project.)
The C and C++ compilers will then process the whole "compilation unit", i.e. the current source file with all the included headers.
The key concept is that you define the struct/class in a .h header, so that you can use it in multiple .cpp files. Whenever you need struct foo defined in foo.h, you #include "foo.h". You don't need to directly compile the header file, it will be pulled in by whichever source file uses it. Therefore you don't need a make target for .h in normal circumstances.
If the definition in the header is never used, it won't be pulled in and that's it.
I am reading the book Absolute C++ 5th edition.
In page 716,
I don't really understand why it needs include "pfarray.cpp"
Is include "pfarray.h" not enough?
More specifically, even if we have declarations in .h file but implementations in .cpp files, when we still have to include .cpp file?
Thank you in advance.
You don't have to.
A translation unit is a group of files with definitions and declarations. Compiling a translation unit, the compiler needs to know everything about declarations and re-parse them again and again. The definitions on the other hand can be compiled just once and reused for another units.
A translation unit can be separated in .h and .cpp files. You should put the declarations in .h and definitions in .cpp files to obey one definition rule. This approach also reduces compilation time.
Writing template-d classes and functions (without specialization), some coders (a bad habit in my opinion) will put the implementations in the .cpp files and they have to include them at the end of its corresponding .h file or in a .cpp file which needs them. It's just confusing. A better naming convention is to rename these type of .cpp files to .impl.cpp and including them at the end of its .h file.
When you write #include anything.any_extension, the extension doesn't really matter to the preprocessor. It's really like a "take the contents from that file and paste it into this file" kind of brute mechanism. So you can include anything without error provided that the code inside is legit, and you can name a header file with any extension. So you can even name them with a .txt extension and it wouldn't really matter to the preprocessor.
I would suggest that the practice of including source files is rather confusing, mainly from a build standpoint since it's not very clear whether a source file (cpp, cc, etc) is supposed to be built as a separate object file to link against or #included or both.
Yet it's sometimes done anyways. For example, pfarray.cpp might contain an implementation for a template since templates typically need their full implementation visible at compile time at the site generating the code, and sometimes authors establish a habit of #including files with source file extensions to avoid putting the implementation details into the same header file while uniformly conforming to a style that favors putting all such details into files named with a source file convention.
Another reason this can be done, but I don't think it's the reason it was done in your case, is as a build optimization (see Unity builds). It can sometimes be more efficient to compile and link fewer files, so using #include for source files can be a crude way to fuse them all together into a single build target.
In Python whenever I had a bunch of functions that I wanted to use across multiple programs I'd make another .py file and then just import that wherever I needed it. How would I do that in C/C++? Do I dump both prototype and implementation into an .h file? or do I need to place the function prototypes in the .h file and the implementations in a separate .cpp file with the same name as the .h file and #include the .h wherever I need it?
You need to do a couple of things:
Add the prototype to a header file.
Write a new source file with the function definitions.
In a source file that just wants to use the shared function, you need to add #include "header.h" (replacing header.h with the name of the file from step 1) someplace before you try to call the shared function (normally you put all includes at the top of the source file).
Make sure your build compiles the new source file and includes that in the link.
A couple of other comments. It's normal to have foo.h as the header for the foo.c but that is only a style guideline.
When using headers, you want to add include guards to protect against the multiple include issue.
In C/C++ we usually put declarations in .h files and implementation in .c/cpp files.
(Note: there're many other ways, for example the include, templates, inline, extern, ... so you may find some code only in header files or only in c/cpp files - for example some of the STL and templates.)
Then you need to "link" the file with your program, which works like the "import" in Python interpreter but actually works in static linking object files together into a single executable file.
However the "link" command and syntax depends on your compiler and OS linker. So you need to check your compiler for more information, for example "ld" on UNIX and "link.exe" on DOS/Windows. Moreover, usually the C compiler will invoke the linker automatically.
For example, say you have 2 files: a.c and b.c (with a.h and b.h), on gcc:
gcc -o a.out a.c b.c
On MSVC:
cl a.c b.c
There are two ways to approach this that differ only slightly. As others have said, the first steps are:
-Create a header file which contains your function prototypes. You'll want to mark this with
# ifndef myheader_h
# define myheader_h
// prototypes go here...
# endif
to prevent problems with multiple inclusions.
-Create a .c file which contains the actual definitions.
Here's where the solutions branch.
If you want to include the source directly in your project, make the .c file part of your compilation stage as well as your link stage.
However, if you really plan on using this across multiple projects, you'll probably want to compile this source file independently, and reference the object file from your other projects. This is loosely what a "library" is, though libraries may consist of multiple object modules - each of which has been compiled but not yet linked.
update
Someone pointed out that this really only keeps the header from being included in a single cpp file. News flash: that's all you need to do.
Compilers treat each cpp file individually. The header files included by each cpp source file tell the compiler, "hey! This thing is defined in another source file! Assume references that match this prototype are A-OK and keep moving on."
The LINKER, on other other hand, is responsible for fixing up these references, and IT will throw a fit if the same symbol is defined in multiple object files. For that to happen, a function would have to be defined in two separate source files - a real definition with a body, not just an extern prototype - OR the object file that contains its body/definition would have to be included in the link command more than once.
Re:"inline"
Use of "inline" is meant as an optmization feature. Functions declared as inline have their bodies expanded inline at each place where they are called. Using this to get around multiple definition errors is very, very bad. This is similar to macro expansion.
See Francis's answer. The sentence that you wrote, "or do I need to place the function prototypes in the .h file and the implementations in a separate .cpp file with the same name as the .h file and #include the .h wherever I need it?", is pretty-much correct. You don't have to do things exactly this way, but it works.
It's up to you how you do this, The compiler doesn't care. But if you put your functions in a .h file, you should declare them __inline otherwise if you include the header file in more than one .cpp file, you will have multiply defined symbols.
On the other hand, if you make them __inline, you will tend to get a copy created in each place that you use the function. This will bloat the size of your program. So unless the functions are quite small, it's probably best to put the functions in a .cpp and create a parallel .h with function prototypes and public structures. This is the way most programmers work.
On the other hand, in the STL (Standard Template Library), virtually all of the code is in header files. (without the .h extension)
I was just wondering what the difference between .cpp and .h files is? What would I use a header file (.h) for and what would I use a cpp file for?
In general, and it really could be a lot less general:
.h (header) files are for declarations of things that are used many times, and are #included in other files
.cpp (implementation) files are for everything else, and are almost never #included
Technically, there is no difference. C++ allows you to put your code in any file, with any format, and it should work.
By convention, you put your declarations (basically, that which makes up your API) in the .h files, and are referred to as "headers". The .cpp files are for the actual "guts" of your code - the implementation details.
Normally, you have the header files included with #include by other files in your project (and other projects, if you're making a library), so the compiler can get the interface required to compile. The implementation, in the .cpp files, is typically implemented so there is one .cpp file "filling in" the implementation per .h file.
By convention, .h files is something that you #include. CPP files are something you add to your project for compiling into separate object file, and then passing to the linker.
The .h file is called the header file. You usually put your interface there (the stuff you want to be public). The cpp file is where you actually implement your interface.
First, both are text files that contain code for the C++ compiler or pre-processor. As far as the system is concerned there is no difference.
By convention different file name extensions are used to indicate the content of files. In C programs you tend to see .h and .c files while in C++ .hpp and .cpp serve the same purposes.
The first group, .h and .hpp files, called header files, contains mostly non-executing code such as definitions of constants and function prototypes. They are added to programs via #include directive and used not only by the program or library in question but by other programs or libraries that will make use of them, declaring interface points and contracts defining values. They are also used to set metadata that may change when compiling for different operating systems.
The second group, .c and .cpp files, contain the executing parts of the code for the library or program.
Correct me if I'm wrong but,
When you #include something, it more-or-less inserts the entire included file into the one with the include command; that is, when I include, say "macros.h" in "genericTools.cpp", the entire contents of "macros.h" is placed in "genericTools.cpp" at that point. This is why you need to use things like "#pragma once" or other protections, to prevent including the same file twice.
Of note, templated code needs to be entirely in the file you're going to be including elsewhere. (I'm unsure of this - can template specializations be ommited from the included files, and linked like a normal function?)
The .cpp that is the implementation file is our actual program or code.
When we need to use different inbuilt functions in our code, we must include the header file that is .h files.
These .h files contains the actual code of the inbuilt functions that we use hence we can simply call the respective functions.
Therefore, while we compile our code we can see more number of lines compiled than what we have actually coded because not only our code is compiled but along with that the (code of the) functions (that are included in .h files) are also compiled.