declarations in include files: how do YOU feel?

[Robert W Berry]

>From article <11318 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, by scs at sloth.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit):
> In article <179 at larry.sal.wisc.edu> jwp at larry.sal.wisc.edu (Jeffrey W Percival) writes:

    ... include variable declarations in header file? ...

> 
> By all means.  I'd say that this is the recommended standard
> practice.  If you're using ANSI-style function prototypes, put
> the prototypes in too, of course.  If you're not using
> prototypes, you may leave out extern declarations for those
> functions returning int.  (You may also leave them in, for
> documentation purposes.)

     Is it?  I thought the more general practice was to define the
variable types (structures, unions, etc.) and have the programmer
declare a variable of the appropriate type for use in his function.
Look at file pointers (of type FILE *) that you declare for stream I/O,
low-level structures (such as REGS in Turbo C), windowing libraries
often have a structure called "window" that is manipulated by the
library rountines.

     I definitely vote yes on having prototypes in the header file (if
you're into prototypes that is).  But declaring variables there scares 
me a little.  (And there's always the nasty possibity of duplicating a 
variable name -- although this already happens with certain structure 
names in header files.)

     Bob

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