What do .c and .h file extensions mean to C?

Question

It\'s all in the title; super-simple I reckon, but it\'s so hard to search for syntactical things anywhere.

These are two library files that I\'m copying from CS50.n

Answer 1

Of course, there is nothing that says the extension of a header file must be .h and the extension of a C source file must be .c. These are useful conventions.

E:\Temp> type my.interface
#ifndef MY_INTERFACE_INCLUDED
#define MYBUFFERSIZE 8
#define MY_INTERFACE_INCLUDED
#endif

E:\Temp> type my.source
#include 

#include "my.interface"

int main(void) {
    char x[MYBUFFERSIZE] = {0};
    x[0] = 'a';
    puts(x);
    return 0;
}

E:\Temp> gcc -x c my.source -o my.exe

E:\Temp> my
a