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Defining A Namespace

A namespace is used to avoid naming collisions between similarly named variables, functions, etc. in different scopes or libraries. A namespace defines a scope by wrapping code in namespace blocks which are given names. Variables and functions inside namespaces can be accessed by qualifying with the namespace name or using a using directive.

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33 views2 pages

Defining A Namespace

A namespace is used to avoid naming collisions between similarly named variables, functions, etc. in different scopes or libraries. A namespace defines a scope by wrapping code in namespace blocks which are given names. Variables and functions inside namespaces can be accessed by qualifying with the namespace name or using a using directive.

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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Namespace

Consider a situation, when we have two persons with the same name, Zara, in the same class.
Whenever we need to differentiate them definitely we would have to use some additional
information along with their name, like either the area if they live in different area or their
mother or father name, etc.

Same situation can arise in your C++ applications. For example, you might be writing some code
that has a function called xyz() and there is another library available which is also having same
function xyz(). Now the compiler has no way of knowing which version of xyz() function you
are referring to within your code.

A namespace is designed to overcome this difficulty and is used as additional information to


differentiate similar functions, classes, variables etc. with the same name available in different
libraries. Using namespace, you can define the context in which names are defined. A namespace
defines a scope.

Defining a Namespace:

A namespace definition begins with the keyword namespace followed by the namespace name
as follows:

namespace namespace_name
{

}
Example:
Namespace check
{
int x;
void show(int y)
{
cout<<y<<endl;
}
}

Here the variable x and function show( ) are inside the scope defined by the namespace ‘check’.
The value for x can be assigned using qualifying namespace name followed by scope resolution
operator.
Check::x=10;

But always using the qualifier to access the variable becomes difficult. Hence, we use a ‘using”
directive to simplify the access. The syntax is as:

using namespace name_of_namespace;


Example:
using namespace check;
x=2;
show(3);

here all the members declared within the namespace check can be accesses directly.

Example:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
namespace CSE
{
int a=6;
void display()
{
cout<<”hello”<<endl;
}
}
int main()
{
using namespace CSE;
cout< <a<<endl;
display();
return 0;
}
In the above program variable ‘a’ and function ‘display()’ is defined in the scope CSE. Hence to
use variable ‘a’ and function ‘display()’ in ‘main()’, we need to use the statement

using namespace CSE;

the other way of doing the same is by preceding the variable name and function name with
namespace name followed by scope resolution operator as follows.

int main()
{
cout<<CSE::a<<endl;
CSE::display();
return 0;
}

To define a function display function outside the namespace

Syntax:
Return_type namespace_name :: function_name(arglist)
{
}

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