4.3 External Declarations

An object declaration outside of a function is called an external declaration. Contrast this with an internal declaration, which is a declaration made inside a function or block; the declaration is internal to that function or block, and is visible only to that function or block. The compiler recognizes an internally declared identifier from the point of the declaration to the end of the block.

If an object's declaration has file scope and an initializer, the declaration is also an external definition for the object. A C program consists of a sequence of external definitions of objects and functions.

Any definition reserves storage for the entity being declared. For example:

float fvalue = 15.0;                /* external definition  */
main ()
{
  int ivalue = 15;                  /* internal definition  */
}

External data declarations and external function definitions take the same form as any data or function declaration (see Chapter 5 for standard function declaration syntax), and must follow these rules:

• The storage class of an object externally declared can be left unspecified, or it can be declared as extern or static (see Section 2.10). If it is unspecified, the default is the extern storage class, and linkage for the declared object is external. The type specifier may also be omitted, in which case the default type is int . Note that the storage-class-specifier, type-qualifier, and type-specifier cannot all be omitted from a declaration.

• If an object with external linkage is declared or used in an expression, there must be only one external definition for the identifier somewhere in the program. If the same object is declared more than once externally, the declarations must agree in type and linkage. (See Section 2.8.)

• If one or more of the declarations incompletely specify the object's type, and there exists one declaration of the object with completed type, all the declarations are taken to be in agreement with the completed type.

• The scope of external declarations persist to the end of the file in which they are declared, while internal declarations persist only to the end of the block in which they were declared. Data objects to be used within only one block should be declared in that block. The syntax for external definitions is the same as for all definitions. Function definitions can only occur at the external level.

• Externally declared auto and register objects are not permitted. Internally declared auto and register objects are not automatically initialized and, if not explicitly initialized, have the irrelevant value previously stored at their address. All static objects are automatically initialized to 0, if not explicitly initialized.

Note

An external function can be called without previously declaring it in C, but this construction is not recommended because of the loss of type checking and subsequent susceptibility to bugs. If such a function call is made, the compiler will treat the function as if an external declaration of type int appeared in the block containing the call. For example:

void function1()
{
int a,b;
x (a,b);
}

Here, the compiler will behave as if the declaration extern int x(); appeared within the function1 definition block.

The first declaration of an identifier in a compilation unit must specify, explicitly or by the omission of the static keyword, whether the identifier is internal or external. For each object, there can be only one definition. Multiple declarations of the same object may be made, as long as there are no conflicting or duplicate definitions for the same object.

An external object may be defined with either an explicit initialization or a tentative definition. A declaration of an object with file scope, without an initializer, and with a storage-class specifier other than static is a tentative definition. The compiler will treat a tentative definition as the object's only definition unless a complete definition for the object is found. As with all declarations, storage is not actually allocated until the object is defined.

If a compilation unit contains more than one tentative definition for an object, and no external definition for the object, the compiler treats the definition as if there were a file scope declaration of the object with an initializer of zero, with composite type as of the end of the compilation unit. See Section 2.7 for a definition of composite type.

If the declaration of an object is a tentative definition and has internal linkage, the declared type must not be an incomplete type. See Section 2.9 for examples of tentative definitions.