Global Code Organization

fr0zen · 12-16-2003, 02:25 PM

I've been searching for documentation, tutorial, some kind of information regarding proper (well, "nice") means of organizing code within separate files, etc. More specifically, namespace usage. I know how to create a namespace

Code:

namespace vsf {
// code
}

But, what I have is something more like the following:

Code:

namespace vsf {
 namespace api {
   // api specific code, functions, variables
 }
 namespace gdi {
   // gdi...
 }
}

I see this as an easy way to prevent name clashes, not to mention organization. The problem is this file is going to get big after a while (big project). So, why not split it up? I want to first have each 'inner' namespace in its own .h file, defined (all variables and functions), and then an implementation file for each inner namespace that initializes the variables and specifies the function bodies.

I'm not saying I haven't tried to do this. I've tried several times. Each time it ends up with me getting several hundred errors. Usually 'unresolved symbol' or 'duplicate definition', or something to that effect.

deiussum · 12-16-2003, 02:39 PM

If you are going to put global variables in the header file, you should use the "extern" keyword and then put the actual implementation of those global variables into a source file. And don't forget the pre-compiler guards!

Example:

Code:

// Header
#ifndef _SOME_HEADER_H_
#define _SOME_HEADER_H_

extern int g_nValue;
#endif

// Source file
#include "someheader.h"

int g_nValue = 0;