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Uses of Header Files

Header files serve two kinds of purposes:

Including a header file produces the same results in C compilation as copying the header file into each source file that needs it. But such copying would be time-consuming and error-prone. With a header file, the related declarations appear in only one place. If they need to be changed, they can be changed in one place, and programs that include the header file will automatically use the new version when recompiled.

By convention, names of header files end with the extension ".h".


The GNU C Preprocessor

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