C code file extension cc vs cpp

Question

I have seen C   code saved as both  cc and  cpp files  Is there a difference between the two   The Google style guide seems to suggest  cc  but provides no explanation   I am mainly concerned with programs on Linux systems

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cpp is the recommended extension for C   as far as I know   Some people even recommend using  hpp for C   headers  just to differentiate from C   Although the compiler doesn t care what you do  it s personal preference

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GNU GCC recognises all of the following as C   files  and will use C   compilation regardless of whether you invoke it through gcc or g     C   cc   cpp   CPP   c     cp  or  cxx   Note the  C - case matters in GCC   c is a C file whereas  C is a C   file  if you let the compiler decide what it is compiling that is    GCC also supports other suffixes to indicate special handling  for example a  ii file will be compiled as C    but not pre-processed  intended for separately pre-processed code   All the recognised suffixes are detailed at gcc gnu org

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I ve use  C and  h for source and header  respectively   One nice thing with that choice is that  on the command line  its easy to use    Ch  to select all of the code files   Using  C could be a problem on case insensitive filesystems  but if you have foo c and foo C in the same directory  you deserve what you get anyway

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Great advice on which to use for the makefile and other tools  considering non-compiler tools while deciding on which extension to use is a great approach to help find an answer that works for you   I just wanted to add the following to help with some  cc vs  cpp info that I found  The following are extensions broken down by different environments  from the  C   Primer Plus  book    Unix uses   C   cc   cxx   c  GNU C   uses    C   cc   cxx   cpp   c    Digital Mars uses    cpp   cxx  Borland C   uses   cpp  Watcom uses    cpp  Microsoft Visual C   uses    cpp   cxx   cc  Metrowerks CodeWarrior uses    cpp   cp   cc   cxx   c    The different environments support different extensions   I too was looking to answer this question and found this post  Based on this post I think I might go with  hpp and  cpp for ease of cross-platform cross-tool recognition

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At the end of the day it doesn t matter because C   compilers can deal with the files in either format   If it s a real issue within your team  flip a coin and move on to the actual work

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I am starting a new C   project and started looking for the latest in C   style   I ended up here regarding file naming and I thought that I would share how I came up with my choice   Here goes   Stroustrup sees this more as a business consideration than a technical one   Following his advice  let s check what the toolchains expect   For UNIX Linux  you may interpret the following default GNU make rules as favoring the  cc filename suffix  as  cpp and  C rules are just aliases     make -p   egrep COMPILE       COMPILE cc     CXX    CXXFLAGS    CPPFLAGS    TARGET ARCH  -c COMPILE cpp     COMPILE cc  COMPILE C     COMPILE cc     Note  there is no default COMPILE cxx alias   So if you are targeting UNIX Linux  both  cc and  cpp are very good options   When targeting Windows  you are looking for trouble with  C  as its file system is case-insensitive   And it may be important for you to note that Visual Studio favors the  cpp suffix  When targeting macOS  note that Xcode prefers  cpp  hpp  just checked on Xcode 10 1    You can always change the header template to use  h   For what it is worth  you can also base your decision on the code bases that you like    Google uses  cc and LLVM libc   uses  cpp  for instance   What about header files   They are compiled in the context of a C or C   file  so there is no compiler or build system need to distinguish  h from  hpp   Syntax highlighting and automatic indentation by your editor IDE can be an issue  however  but this is fixed by associating all  h files to a C   mode   As an example  my emacs config on Linux loads all  h files in C   mode and it edits C headers just fine   Beyond that  when mixing C and C    you can follow this advice      My personal conclusion   cpp  h is the path of least resistance

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The other option is  cxx where the x is supposed to be a plus rotated 45      Windows  Mac and Linux all support  c   so we should just use that

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As others wrote before me  at the end its what being used by your project team company   Personally  I am not using cc extension  I am trying to lower the number of extensions and not increase them  unless there s a clear value  in my opinion    For what its worth  this is what I m using   c - Pure C code only  no classes or structs with methods   cpp - C   code  hpp - Headers only code  Implementations are in the headers  like template classes   h - header files for both C C    I agree another distinction can be made  but as I wrote  I am trying to lower the number of extensions for simplicity  At least from the C   projects I ve worked in  h files for pure-C are more rare  therefore I did not want to add another extension

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I personally use  cc extension for implementation files   hh for headers  and  inl for inline templates   As said before  it is mainly a matter of taste   From what I ve seen   cc seems to be more  open source projects oriented   as it is advised in some great open source software coding styles  whereas  cpp seems to be more Windowish   --- EDIT  As mentioned  this is  from what i ve seen   it may be wrong  It s just that all Windows projects I ve worked on used  cpp  and a lot of open source projects  which are mainly on unix-likes  use  cc   Examples coding styles using  cc    Google  http   google-styleguide googlecode com svn trunk cppguide xml ICL   http   www doc ic ac uk lab cplus c   rules chap4 html sect2

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Other file extensions used include  cxx and  C  capital C   I believe Bjarne Stroustrup used  C originally   cpp is the name of the C preprocessor so it s unfortunate that it was used for C   as well

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The  cc extension is necessary for using implicit rules within makefiles  Look through these links to get a better understanding of makefiles  but look mainly the second one  as it clearly says the usefulness of the  cc extension   ftp   ftp gnu org old-gnu Manuals make-3 79 1 html chapter make 2 html  https   ftp gnu org old-gnu Manuals make-3 79 1 html chapter make 10 html  I just learned of this now

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Several people saying  cc doesn t stand for anything   It might   C   started life as  C with Classes    True that  cc and  cpp are also command names on most Unix systems  c compiler and c preprocessor respectively    I use  cpp exclusively  but I started on Windows   cc is more a Unix convention  although I see it less and less even there   GNU make has rules for  cpp so that s probably preferred  it will work by default on both Windows and everything else   On the other hand modern C   uses no extension at all for headers  I really don t like that   All my projects use  h for header files  and they support both C and C   as much as possible via extern  C  and testing   cplusplus

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C and  cc seem to be standard for the  few  Unix-oriented C   programs I ve seen  I ve always used  cpp myself  since I only really work on Windows and that s been the standard there since like forever   I recommend  cpp personally  because    it stands for  C Plus Plus   It is of course vitally important that file extensions are acronyms  but should this rationale prove insufficiently compelling other important things are non-use of the shift key  which rules out  C and  c    and avoidance of regular expression metacharacters where possible  which rules out  c   -- unfortunately you can t really avoid the   of course      This doesn t rule out  cc  so even though it doesn t really stand for anything  or does it   it is probably a good choice for Linux-oriented code

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It doesn t matter which of those extensions you d use  Pick whichever you like more  just be consistent with naming  The only exception I m aware of with this naming convention is that I couldn t make WinDDK  or is it WDK now   to compile  cc files  On Linux though that s hardly a problem

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I ve personally never seen  cc in any project that I ve worked on  but in all technicality the compiler won t care    Who will care is the developers working on your source  so my rule of thumb is to go with what your team is comfortable with  If your  team  is the open source community  go with something very common  of which  cpp seems to be the favourite

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As with most style conventions  there are only two things that matter    Be consistent in what you use  wherever possible  Don t design anything that depends on a specific choice being used    Those may seem to contradict  but they each have value for their own reasons

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Just follow the convention being used for by project team

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