Names used for include guards?

Question

Are there any guidelines people tend to follow when selecting a name for their include guard? I don\'t understand why the name for the .h file will slightly dif

Answer 1

To pick a good name for a header guard, consider these points:

1) the name has to be unique, so make it long and specific. That can usually be accomplished by including things like project name, module name, file name and file extension.

2) make sure you don't use names reserved for the implementation. So, names starting with underscore followed by a capital letter are out, as are names containing double underscore, names ending in _t and a few more.

3) make the name make sense to human readers. So don't just generate a UUID and use that.

4) convention dictates that you use all uppercase for macros to distinguish them from ordinary variables.

Underscores are not needed, as such, but since you cannot use spaces in macro names, underscores serve as a good alternative to keep things readable.

So, IMHO, a good guard name for a file foo.h in a submodule bar inside project baz is: BAZ_BAR_FOO_H .