Re: [boost] Re: #ifndef paradigm

From: Greg Colvin (Gregory.Colvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-28 11:56:28

At 10:20 AM 8/28/2002, Victor A. Wagner, Jr. wrote:
>At Tuesday 2002/08/27 12:25, you wrote:
>>True, but I fail to see how co-dependent headers is ever the correct way to
>>implement something.
>
>I never saw the "common" use for being able to #include the same file more than once.

In combination with each header including every header it needs it means
the users need only include the "top level" headers that they need, in
whatever order they want, without knowing about underlying dependencies.
That is a nice property for library headers to have, and a property Boost
has decided it wants to have, but it comes at a price in library maintenance
and compile speed.

>If there really IS a meaningful usage, THAT should have been the one to do the extra work, not the common stuff.
>.. for all the effort they went to make C "terse" they sure messed up in this case

I've built lots of systems without header guards.  We documented the
dependencies, and if you included files in the wrong order or more than once
you would lose.  The tersest code is no code at all.