A Tour of C++

3. Modularity

Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting.

– Winston S. Churchill

• Introduction

• Separate Compilation

• Namespaces

• Error Handling

Exceptions; Invariants; Static Assertions

• Advice

3.1. Introduction

A C++ program consists of many separately developed parts, such as functions (§1.3), user-defined types (Chapter 2), class hierarchies (§4.5), and templates (Chapter 5). The key to managing this is to clearly define the interactions among those parts. The first and most important step is to distinguish between the interface to a part and its implementation. At the language level, C++ represents interfaces by declarations. A declaration specifies all that’s needed to use a function or a type. For example:

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