Re: public headers

From:

=?UTF-8?B?RXJpayBXaWtzdHLDtm0=?= <Erik-wikstrom@telia.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:02:33 GMT

Message-ID:

<tTrKi.9733$ZA.5774@newsb.telia.net>

On 2007-09-26 11:42, iesvs@free.fr wrote:

On Sep 26, 11:04 am, Adam Nielsen <adam.niel...@remove.this.uq.edu.au>

This isn't how programming languages generally work, they're not
supposed to be closed because let's face it, a bunch of text files isn't
really that secure. If someone is determined to see how your code works
they'll figure it out eventually. Hiding code like this will only trick
you into thinking it's secure.

I don't want to hide my code (it's technologically impossible, even
with a binary, which is a source code for the system's language). I
just want to give a complete API in .h, someone using it doesn't need
to look inside the .c, but if he wants (Why ? I don't know) he can.

You really should not confuse the header files with the documentation of
the API, they should be separate, even if it is just by generating the
documentation from the source via doxygen or similar tools. Neither C
not C++ is expressive enough to accurately describe an interface (such
as pre- and post-conditions, invariants, etc.) with just the the
information usually found in a header file.

--
Erik Wikstr??m