Scope resolution in C++

i have the following class

Code:

#ifndef CLRSCR_H
#define CLRSCR_H

#include <windows.h>

namespace clrscr
{
	void clear_screen ( void )
	{
	  DWORD n;                         /* Number of characters written */
	  DWORD size;                      /* number of visible characters */
	  COORD coord = {0};               /* Top left screen position */
	  CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;

	  /* Get a handle to the console */
	  HANDLE h = GetStdHandle ( STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE );

	  GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo ( h, &csbi );

	  /* Find the number of characters to overwrite */
	  size = csbi.dwSize.X * csbi.dwSize.Y;

	  /* Overwrite the screen buffer with whitespace */
	  FillConsoleOutputCharacter ( h, TEXT ( ' ' ), size, coord, &n );
	  GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo ( h, &csbi );
	  FillConsoleOutputAttribute ( h, csbi.wAttributes, size, coord, &n );

	  /* Reset the cursor to the top left position */
	  SetConsoleCursorPosition ( h, coord );
	}
}

#endif

If i include this class in two .cpp files, i get a link error

Code:

error LNK2005: "void __cdecl clrscr::clear_screen(void)" (?clear_screen@clrscr@@YAXXZ) already defined in .... .obj

I thought this only happens when you try include same header in two different .h files, not .cpp ...?

That rule of thumb only applies if you do not lie about your headers. Since you have the body of a function, this is not a header.

That said, you probably would place the function definition in the header if the function was meant to be inline. In this case clear_screen is probably not a good candidate for an inline function, but if you did declare the function inline there should not be a linker error even if the compiler chooses not to inline the function.

When you put #include in your program, the compiler will do a copy and paste of the file's content into the source file before doing the compilation. Since you have #include in both of your source files, you get two copies of the header file's contents - one in each source file. Also, since the header file contains actual code and not just a function prototype (which I'm guessing is what the header should probably just be) you have the code for the clear_screen function being compiled twice - once into each object file. When the linker tries to combine the two object files into a single executable, it sees this duplicate code and throws the above error at you complaining that you essentially have two of the same thing - the final executable has code that calls the clear_screen function (presumably) but does not know which "version" to call which is why this is an error.

You need to make your header file just a simple function prototype (minus the actual code). The code should go in it's own source file and compiled along with the other two source files.

thanx all ... BTW, is that function clear_screen a lot more better than system("cls") in terms of portability? i know its not perfect either but can one get away with it .. I wanted to use pdcurses from GNU but getting errors ...

BTW, is that function clear_screen a lot more better than system("cls") in terms of portability?

Well, both work only in Windows, so it's at least equal. The advantage is that you can replace the implementation with one that works on other systems, which isn't really possible with system("cls").

By the way, why a namespace for a single function?

Originally Posted by csonx_p

BTW, is that function clear_screen a lot more better than system("cls") in terms of portability? i know its not perfect either but can one get away with it

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