aaron wrote:
> I am just trying to write a simple IPv6 socket app.
> after #including <netinet/in.h> I noticed that I have to include <sys/types.h>
> BEFORE <netinet/in.h> which struck me as rather strange...
>
> Should not .h files include the depending .h files themselves so that all
> dependencies of type / struct / #define definitions are met automatically?
Such an arrangement is called "promiscuous includes".
The problems with doing this are many, but the main ones are:
o Including a file to get something expected into the namespace
drags unexpected things into the namespace (perhaps a lot of
them).
o Compilation times go up geometrically
o The programmer is shielded from explicit knowledge of the
included files; this is bad, since it's the programmer's
job to know these things
o The resulting code is not portable to all platforms
o Header files that do this are not technically standards
compliant, since the standards dictate which header files
are needed to access which functions in the API.
-- Terry
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