A Couple of Questions

Hello, it's toonlover here again, I have a couple of questions that I'm not quite sure how to use them. Please , I'd sure would apriciate it:

-> Why sometimes they use .cpp as a library and not .h
-> What exactly does #pragma , #ifdef , #ifndef , and #undef do?
-> How can you make your program change it's type of file, example, when finishing compliling, it creates an .exe, instead of .exe, how can I choose what type I want it to be instead of .exe. How?

Thankyou in advance

Quote:

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Why sometimes they use .cpp as a library and not .h

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By convention, .h files contain declarations and .cpp files contain definitions. Definitions can only appear once in the whole program. Declarations can be included once per file, but they can appear in many files.

An #include statement causes the contents of the specified file to replace the include statement. Since you can structure a program like this:

Code:

---

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;

//declaration of class:
class MyClass
{
public:
        void display();
};

//Definition of member function:
void MyClass::display()
{
        cout<<"greetings from MyClass"<<endl;
}

int main()
{
        MyClass obj;
        obj.display();
       
        return 0;
}

---

you can also put this in a separate file and include it:

Code:

---

//declaration of class:
class MyClass
{
public:
        void display();
};

//Definition of member function:
void MyClass::display()
{
        cout<<"greetings from MyClass"<<endl;
}

---

It doesn't matter if you name that file with a .h extension or a .cpp extension, the contents will replace the include statement. The problem with putting both the declarations and definitions in the same file goes back to the first rule I stated: definitions can only appear once in a program. However, you also have to introduce all the names in a file before using them, which means you may need to introduce MyClass at the top of more than one file if the name MyClass is used in more than one file. The way you introduce a name in a file is by including its declaration in the file. With the declarations and definitions in the same file, if you include that file more than once then the definitions will appear more than once.

Therefore, you would normally split that section up into two parts: by convention the declaration would be in a .h file and the definitions in a .cpp file. Then, you would include the .h file in any file that used the name MyClass.

Quote:

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What exactly does #pragma , #ifdef , #ifndef , and #undef do?

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They are all preprocessor directives, which are statements the compiler executes before compiling your program.

#pragma doesn't do anything exactly. It is a command reserved for a compiler to do what it wants with it, so you have to check a compiler's specific documentation to know what it does.

#ifdef and #ifndef are if statements that check to see if a name is 'defined'. When something is defined it exists, when something isn't defined or it is defined and subsequently undefined(#undef), it doesn't exist. That can be useful to prevent code duplication. Header files typically are surrounded by:

Code:

---

#ifndef SOME_NAME_H
#def SOME_NAME_H

//declarations

#endif

---

They are used to prevent including a header file more than once in the same file. When there are a lot of files in your program and you are including files that include other files, it can be almost impossible to work out whether you are including a header file more than once in a file. So with those "inclusion guards", you can prevent a header file from being included more than once in the same file. The first time the file is included, SOME_NAME_H won't exist so it won't be defined, and the preprocessor enters the if-block. The first statement inside the if-block is to define the name SOME_NAME_H, so now it exists. Then, the rest of the code is included in the file. If an attempt is made to include that file again in the same file, then the if condition will fail, and the preprocessor will skip the code in the if-block and end up including nothing.

#define can be used to substitute things in your code. For instance:

#define PI 3.142

will replace the characters PI anywhere they appear in your program with 3.142. If at some point in your file, you don't want that substitution to occur anymore, you can undefine PI:

#undefine PI

Then no more substitutions for the characters PI will occur from that point on.

Quote:

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How can you make your program change it's type of file, example, when finishing compiling, it creates an .exe, instead of .exe, how can I choose what type I want it to be instead of .exe. How?

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I don't think you can. It seems to me that the whole purpose of compiling a program is to create a .exe file that you can execute. Why would you want to compile a program you didn't want to execute?

Well by changind the type of file my program came out with, I wanted it to change to .scr, to make it into a screensaver. Well, thankyou 7studl, for helping me with all this questions

Most of the compilers I know understand the -o switch
like

Code:

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g++ main.cc -o screensaver.scr

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K

Or you can rename the generated output file:

windows: "ren output.exe output.scr"
linux: "mv output output.scr"

since .scr is exactly the same as .exe. In fact, that's how I recently wrote my own screen saver. :)

Thankyou guy guys, I'll try those methods right now