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+--- Thread: #include statements that include a slash (header files made up of two parts) (/Thread-include-statements-that-include-a-slash-header-files-made-up-of-two-parts)
#include statements that include a slash (header files made up of two parts) - counterirritant840559 - 07-27-2023
Sometimes I see header files of the form.
#include <sys/sysinfo.h> // I found this on my system under /usr/include/sys/sysinfo.h. Is that all the "sys/" means?
What is this called and why are these header files different from most others like
#include <stdio.h>
Maybe a group of related header files been grouped under the label of 'sys', but if I try something like "man pci" (there's a pci.h header in /usr/include/sys/ there is no entry.
RE: #include statements that include a slash (header files made up of two parts) - wavefront397697 - 07-27-2023
They're still headers, but they're not directly in the default search paths. This is often done for headers from third-party libraries, to keep them separate from the stock libc headers.
RE: #include statements that include a slash (header files made up of two parts) - pigsty229091 - 07-27-2023
It is a convenient way of providing some 'namespace structure' to header files. In the Unix world, the main division is between headers like `<stdio.h>` which are often fairly general and primarily for use by user programs and not primarily for use by the operating system kernel. By contrast, the headers like `<sys/sysinfo.h>` or `<sys/types.h>` were intended for use when compiling the kernel - they were more system-y.
Nowadays, it provides a way to separate your project's headers from another project's headers. For example, `<openssl/ssl.h>` identifies the header as belonging to the OpenSSL code base.
I don't know that there is a particular name for this style of specifying headers.
Note that if the OpenSSL headers are stored in the directory `/usr/local/include/openssl`, then you specify `-I /usr/local/include` on the compiler command line. What actually happens is that the header is looked for by prefixing the name in the angle brackets by one of a number of standard directories, of which the default one is `/usr/include` on Unix. Therefore, `<stdio.h>` is found in `/usr/include/stdio.h` and `<sys/sysinfo.h>` is found in `/usr/include/sys/sysinfo.h`, etc.
RE: #include statements that include a slash (header files made up of two parts) - apomecometrytmvn - 07-27-2023
It has to do with how your preprocessor works. If your preprocessor looks in `/usr/include/` then you need `sys/sysinfo.h`. If your preprocessor looks in `/usr/include/sys/` then you only need `sysinfo.h`
Try playing around with gcc with the `-I` and `-l` options
edit: those should be capital i and lowercase L