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- <a name="Files"></a>
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- Next: <a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" accesskey="n" rel="next">Concept Index</a>, Previous: <a href="Guard-Macros.html#Guard-Macros" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Guard Macros</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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- <a name="File-Handling"></a>
- <h2 class="unnumbered">File Handling</h2>
- <a name="index-files"></a>
-
- <p>Fairly obviously, the file handling code of cpplib resides in the file
- <samp>files.c</samp>. It takes care of the details of file searching,
- opening, reading and caching, for both the main source file and all the
- headers it recursively includes.
- </p>
- <p>The basic strategy is to minimize the number of system calls. On many
- systems, the basic <code>open ()</code> and <code>fstat ()</code> system calls can
- be quite expensive. For every <code>#include</code>-d file, we need to try
- all the directories in the search path until we find a match. Some
- projects, such as glibc, pass twenty or thirty include paths on the
- command line, so this can rapidly become time consuming.
- </p>
- <p>For a header file we have not encountered before we have little choice
- but to do this. However, it is often the case that the same headers are
- repeatedly included, and in these cases we try to avoid repeating the
- filesystem queries whilst searching for the correct file.
- </p>
- <p>For each file we try to open, we store the constructed path in a splay
- tree. This path first undergoes simplification by the function
- <code>_cpp_simplify_pathname</code>. For example,
- <samp>/usr/include/bits/../foo.h</samp> is simplified to
- <samp>/usr/include/foo.h</samp> before we enter it in the splay tree and try
- to <code>open ()</code> the file. CPP will then find subsequent uses of
- <samp>foo.h</samp>, even as <samp>/usr/include/foo.h</samp>, in the splay tree and
- save system calls.
- </p>
- <p>Further, it is likely the file contents have also been cached, saving a
- <code>read ()</code> system call. We don’t bother caching the contents of
- header files that are re-inclusion protected, and whose re-inclusion
- macro is defined when we leave the header file for the first time. If
- the host supports it, we try to map suitably large files into memory,
- rather than reading them in directly.
- </p>
- <p>The include paths are internally stored on a null-terminated
- singly-linked list, starting with the <code>"header.h"</code> directory search
- chain, which then links into the <code><header.h></code> directory chain.
- </p>
- <p>Files included with the <code><foo.h></code> syntax start the lookup directly
- in the second half of this chain. However, files included with the
- <code>"foo.h"</code> syntax start at the beginning of the chain, but with one
- extra directory prepended. This is the directory of the current file;
- the one containing the <code>#include</code> directive. Prepending this
- directory on a per-file basis is handled by the function
- <code>search_from</code>.
- </p>
- <p>Note that a header included with a directory component, such as
- <code>#include "mydir/foo.h"</code> and opened as
- <samp>/usr/local/include/mydir/foo.h</samp>, will have the complete path minus
- the basename ‘<samp>foo.h</samp>’ as the current directory.
- </p>
- <p>Enough information is stored in the splay tree that CPP can immediately
- tell whether it can skip the header file because of the multiple include
- optimization, whether the file didn’t exist or couldn’t be opened for
- some reason, or whether the header was flagged not to be re-used, as it
- is with the obsolete <code>#import</code> directive.
- </p>
- <p>For the benefit of MS-DOS filesystems with an 8.3 filename limitation,
- CPP offers the ability to treat various include file names as aliases
- for the real header files with shorter names. The map from one to the
- other is found in a special file called ‘<samp>header.gcc</samp>’, stored in the
- command line (or system) include directories to which the mapping
- applies. This may be higher up the directory tree than the full path to
- the file minus the base name.
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