Writing my own header file ...

[thepenguin]

Hi All,

I understand that all the standard C++ libraries are under the namespace std. But if I write my own header file (say, myheader.h) and I want to keep the include declaration as <myheader> instead of <myheader.h>, what should I do? Am I supposed to include my header file in the namespace std or should I define my own namespace?

Thanks for any help!

PS: Sorry for the cross-post!

[Filter]

I understand that all the standard C++ libraries are under the namespace std. But if I write my own header file (say, myheader.h) and I want to keep the include declaration as <myheader> instead of <myheader.h>, what should I do?

Think twice.

Am I supposed to include my header file in the namespace std or should I define my own namespace?

Leave std alone. It's a question of good programming style to define namespaces for your different header style, but it is not a "must" to do so.
I do define namespaces when the code is intended to be a (more or less) general library , but I do skip them sometimes if it's a program specific module.
--
Filter

[thepenguin]

Thanks for the reply, Filter.

[Wizard]

Hi All,

I understand that all the standard C++ libraries are under the namespace std. But if I write my own header file (say, myheader.h) and I want to keep the include declaration as <myheader> instead of <myheader.h>, what should I do? Am I supposed to include my header file in the namespace std or should I define my own namespace?

Thanks for any help!

what you put in the include is the exact name of the file. So just save the file as myheader, instead of myheader.h. I'm assuming you know how to include <> as opposed to include ""
And as was mentioned, it's bad form to mess with other peoples namespaces, especially std.

PS: Sorry for the cross-post!

No problem, taken care of

[omnius]

Convention is to use a .h extension (or something similar) for your header files. If you don't you may confuse people.

[thepenguin]

what you put in the include is the exact name of the file. So just save the file as myheader, instead of myheader.h. I'm assuming you know how to include <> as opposed to include ""
And as was mentioned, it's bad form to mess with other peoples namespaces, especially std.

Now this is confusing me. I know for the fact that header files should be saved with extension (*.h). From what I read in the other posts, according to the new ANSI standards, we write include <myheader> and not include <myheader.h> and then declare as using namespace that contains the library. Now what you are saying is to save it without .h extension and not use namespaces at all.

I am not sure what is right now. Someone correct me please!

[Wizard]

You don't HAVE to save a header file with a .h, .h is just the convention. It's good to use conventions. The other other convention is that the files in the standard C++ libraries do not end in .h. That's why you include them without a .h.

And I meant that you don't need to create a namespace if you don't want to. Namespaces are useful if you have common objects, plan on distributing your code as a library, or want to use the same name without worrying about overloading.

Am I making sense yet, or just making things worse?

[thepenguin]

Thank you Wizard for your patient reply. It now makes perfect sense about what you said earlier.