I’m making progress but without really understanding the big picture for now.

When you build a C project does it look for the header files first and then find a matching definition in a C file, then linking and compiling based on that?

I did an experiment where I changed the name of the .c file and it worked fine regardless of the name. So is it the header file name that matters the most?

I’m learning as I go so I apologize if I should have read this in a book or manual somewhere. If there is a helpful resource I would appreciate a link to it please. :)

#c #programming #softwareDev #programming

@derickflorian Been a long time since I've worked in C, but if I recall correctly, it processes all of the header files first, using them to build a map of functions and variables and classes that can be invoked (and which external libraries they require).

Then, it compiles the actual code files down into machine-readable binary code.

Then, the linker goes through and actually links that map from the headers with the built code (and any included libraries).

So, yes, the names of the c files don't matter that much. The names of the header files matter, primarily for include purposes.

In C++, the names of the cpp files matter more from a style perspective because the classes are more self-contained and should generally be in matching code/header files.