Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: .h-file extractor from c++ source file available?
Message-ID: <1988Aug7.005251.7548@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <2192@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: Sun, 7 Aug 88 00:52:51 GMT

In article <2192@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> collins@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Patricia Collins) writes:
>Do you know of a utility for extracting include files from c++ source
>files?  It's probably doable with a straightforward awk script...

Do you mean something that builds a .h file containing things like external
declarations for the functions in the source file?  If so, my own experiments
(in C, not C++, but I *think* the experience reads over) suggest that this
doesn't work too well.  In practice one often wants to include things like
data-structure definitions in the .h, *but* one also wants to have some such
definitions that are local to the source file.  Doing it right requires at
least marking the items in the source file that are meant for the .h file.
Doing *that* works better than writing the .h file as a separate entity --
it keeps the relevant things together in one file -- but it's nearly the
same amount of work.  Some of this may be sensitive to the details of my
own programming style, but I'd be skeptical of claims that automatic
extraction without marking worked well.
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu