Include guard

In the C and C++ programming languages, an #include guard, sometimes called a macro guard, header guard or file guard, is a particular construct used to avoid the problem of double inclusion when dealing with the include directive. In the C and C++ programming languages, an #include guard, sometimes called a macro guard, header guard or file guard, is a particular construct used to avoid the problem of double inclusion when dealing with the include directive. The C preprocessor processes directives of the form #include <file> in a source file by locating the associated file on disk and transcluding ('including') its contents into a copy of the source file known as the translation unit, replacing the include directive in the process. The files included in this regard are generally header files, which typically contain declarations of functions and classes or structs. If certain C or C++ language constructs are defined twice, the resulting translation unit is invalid. #include guards prevent this erroneous construct from arising by the double inclusion mechanism. The addition of #include guards to a header file is one way to make that file idempotent. Another construct to combat double inclusion is #pragma once, which is non-standard but nearly universally supported among C and C++ compilers.