Re: #include within namespace scope

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:26:30 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<cfc333af-b94b-4366-9fab-9d8cf4a3d2c3@13g2000yql.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 16, 2:27 pm, joec...@gmail.com wrote:

Is there anything that prevents putting #include directives
inside namespace scope within the standard?


Of course not. Include happens before namespaces are
recognized, and is pure textual inclusion. You can put one in
the middle of a function, if that's what you want.
The only restriction in the standard is with regards to the
standard includes; these must be included "outside of any
external declaration or definition." I'm not sure why the
particular exact wording, but namespaces and classes do count as
declarations, so the include of a standard header must be
outside of them.

Let's say I have a (evil) header:

header.h
#include <vector>
using namespace std; // bad doggy

class Doo
{
public:
 vector<int> d;};

----------
and a test.cc:
namespace evil
{
   #include "header.h"
}

int main()
{
  // Nothing
}

gcc throws up all over the place. What rule am I violating?


You're including a standard header (indirectly) inside a
namespace.

More generally, since headers are textual inclusion, it's very
hard to write one which can really be included within a
namespace. The standard doesn't care, but there's a very large
possibility that the results will not be what you want (unless
the header only contains #define).

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