Unnamed/anonymous namespaces vs. static functions

Question

A feature of C++ is the ability to create unnamed (anonymous) namespaces, like so:

namespace {
    int cannotAccessOutsideThisFile() { ... }
} // namespace
<         


        

Answer 1

From experience I'll just note that while it is the C++ way to put formerly-static functions into the anonymous namespace, older compilers can sometimes have problems with this. I currently work with a few compilers for our target platforms, and the more modern Linux compiler is fine with placing functions into the anonymous namespace.

But an older compiler running on Solaris, which we are wed to until an unspecified future release, will sometimes accept it, and other times flag it as an error. The error is not what worries me, it's what it might be doing when it accepts it. So until we go modern across the board, we are still using static (usually class-scoped) functions where we'd prefer the anonymous namespace.