Unnamed/anonymous namespaces vs. static functions

Question

A feature of C++ is the ability to create unnamed (anonymous) namespaces, like so:

namespace {
    int cannotAccessOutsideThisFile() { ... }
} // namespace
<         


        

Answer 1

I recently began replacing static keywords with anonymous namespaces in my code but immediately ran into a problem where the variables in the namespace were no longer available for inspection in my debugger. I was using VC60, so I don't know if that is a non-issue with other debuggers. My workaround was to define a 'module' namespace, where I gave it the name of my cpp file.

For example, in my XmlUtil.cpp file, I define a namespace XmlUtil_I { ... } for all of my module variables and functions. That way I can apply the XmlUtil_I:: qualification in the debugger to access the variables. In this case, the _I distinguishes it from a public namespace such as XmlUtil that I may want to use elsewhere.

I suppose a potential disadvantage of this approach compared to a truly anonymous one is that someone could violate the desired static scope by using the namespace qualifier in other modules. I don't know if that is a major concern though.