How do you include a header file that may or may not exist?

Question

Let\'s assume I define BAR in foo.h. But foo.h might not exist. How do I include it, without the compiler complaining at me?

#include \"foo.h\"

#ifndef BA         


        

Answer 1

In general, you'll need to do something external to do this - e.g. by doing something like playing around with the search path (as suggested in the comments) and providing an empty foo.h as a fallback, or wrapping the #include inside a #ifdef HAS_FOO_H...#endif and setting HAS_FOO_H by a compiler switch (-DHAS_FOO_H for gcc/clang etc.).

If you know that you are using a particular compiler, and portability is not an issue, note that some compilers do support including a file which may or may not exist, as an extension. For example, see clang's __has_include feature.

Answer 2

Use a tool like GNU Autoconf, that's what it's designed for. (On windows, you may prefer to use CMake).

So in your configure.ac, you'd have a line like:

AC_CHECK_HEADERS([foo.h])

Which, after running configure, would define HAVE_FOO_H, which you can test like this:

#ifdef HAVE_FOO_H
#include "foo.h"
#else
#define BAR 1
#endif

If you intend to go down the autotools route (that is autoconf and automake, because they work well together), I suggest you start with this excellent tutorial.