Alternatives-to-Wrapper-_0023ifndef.html 6.2 KB

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  68. <a name="Alternatives-to-Wrapper-_0023ifndef-1"></a>
  69. <h3 class="section">2.5 Alternatives to Wrapper #ifndef</h3>
  70. <p>CPP supports two more ways of indicating that a header file should be
  71. read only once. Neither one is as portable as a wrapper &lsquo;<samp>#ifndef</samp>&rsquo;
  72. and we recommend you do not use them in new programs, with the caveat
  73. that &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; is standard practice in Objective-C.
  74. </p>
  75. <a name="index-_0023import"></a>
  76. <p>CPP supports a variant of &lsquo;<samp>#include</samp>&rsquo; called &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; which
  77. includes a file, but does so at most once. If you use &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo;
  78. instead of &lsquo;<samp>#include</samp>&rsquo;, then you don&rsquo;t need the conditionals
  79. inside the header file to prevent multiple inclusion of the contents.
  80. &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; is standard in Objective-C, but is considered a
  81. deprecated extension in C and C++.
  82. </p>
  83. <p>&lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; is not a well designed feature. It requires the users of
  84. a header file to know that it should only be included once. It is much
  85. better for the header file&rsquo;s implementor to write the file so that users
  86. don&rsquo;t need to know this. Using a wrapper &lsquo;<samp>#ifndef</samp>&rsquo; accomplishes
  87. this goal.
  88. </p>
  89. <p>In the present implementation, a single use of &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; will
  90. prevent the file from ever being read again, by either &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; or
  91. &lsquo;<samp>#include</samp>&rsquo;. You should not rely on this; do not use both
  92. &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; and &lsquo;<samp>#include</samp>&rsquo; to refer to the same header file.
  93. </p>
  94. <p>Another way to prevent a header file from being included more than once
  95. is with the &lsquo;<samp>#pragma once</samp>&rsquo; directive. If &lsquo;<samp>#pragma once</samp>&rsquo; is
  96. seen when scanning a header file, that file will never be read again, no
  97. matter what.
  98. </p>
  99. <p>&lsquo;<samp>#pragma once</samp>&rsquo; does not have the problems that &lsquo;<samp>#import</samp>&rsquo; does,
  100. but it is not recognized by all preprocessors, so you cannot rely on it
  101. in a portable program.
  102. </p>
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