| The primary effect of the inline keyword is to tell the compiler that a function is not to be exported from the current object. e.g. foo.h: int bar(int i) { return i; /* awesome function! */ foo.cpp:
#include "foo.h"
…
bar(5)
… At this point everything is fine, but lets say there's also: wiffle.cpp:
#include "foo.h"
…
bar(6)
… now both foo.o and bar.o will contain a function named bar - because they picked up the definition in foo.h and c/c++ don't (technically) see any difference between a function that has been written inline, or a function that was included from a header. By slapping the inline keyword on the function bar, the link flags for the function change so that the bar won't be exported from any object file that includes it, and so the name collision will no longer occur at link time. There are a bunch of other benefits, mostly along the lines of "there function doesn't need to be exported therefore if it's not used i don't need to include it in the object" |