C compile time

[Wolfgang Bangerth]

> > > How much of this is because anonymous namespaces are not marking their
> > > contents as static?
> >
> > Even if they did, I don't think it would be a big thing. Most functions
> > in C++ should be member functions, and then they can't be static.
>
> That's not true.  If defined in an anonymous namespace, the member
> functions are not directly accessable to other translation units, thus the
> symbols would be marked private.  Anonymous namespaces effectively make
> them static, it's just that the optimizer is not currently able to take
> advantage of this piece of semantic information...

Yes, yes, I understand that :-) It's just an observation that not a whole lot 
of code is being placed into anonymous namespaces, whether it being functions 
are whole classes. 

As an analogy: Where in C you would have the functions implementing an 
internal interface to some data structure as static functions, they would 
most likely be private/protected member functions of a class in C++, but if 
that class has also a public interface (the usual case), then the class 
cannot be part of an anonymous namespace.

Or do you mean you want to place the implementation of a member functions of a 
publicly visible class into an anonymous namespace? That would strike me as a 
particularly bad and error-prone style...

W.

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Wolfgang Bangerth              email:            bangerth@ices.utexas.edu
                               www: http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~bangerth/