C library naming conventions

Question

Introduction

Hello folks, I recently learned to program in C! (This was a huge step for me, since C++ was the first language, I had contact with and scared me off for

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there's no sure way to avoid name clashes in C. Since it lacks namespaces, you're left with prefixing the names of global functions and variables. Most libraries pick some short and "unique" prefix (unique is in quotes for obvious reasons), and hope that no clashes occur.

One thing to note is that most of the code of a library can be statically declared - meaning that it won't clash with similarly named functions in other files. But exported functions indeed have to be carefully prefixed.