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From: dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: static globals? [addendum to previous message]
Message-ID: <1991May1.020731.16272@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 1 May 91 02:07:31 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.183034.15773@lsuc.on.ca>
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In article <1991Apr30.183034.15773@lsuc.on.ca> jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura) writes:
>     I've never seen this type of declaration before.  Why would you
>bother to declare a "global" as a "static"?  Is there any point to
>it?  It doesn't seem to be a problem for the compilers to handle.

Oops, I forgot one crucial point in my previous message.  If you
declare a global variable as "static" then it will not be exported out
of the .o file it appears in.  So static vs. auto makes a difference
with respect to separate compilation.  The static storage class is
very useful for avoiding name clashes between modules.

If you're not using separate compilation; i.e., if you have one
giant .c file or #include everything all at once, then static
vs. auto makes little difference for globals.

Dave Baggett
dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net