C language manual

首先看下C的头文件的概念：

Header Files

Concept

A header file is a file containing C declarations and macro definitions (see Macros) to be shared between several source files. You request the use of a header file in your program by including it, with the C preprocessing directive ‘#include’.

Purposes

Header files serve two purposes.

System header files declare the interfaces to parts of the operating system. You include them in your program to supply the definitions and declarations you need to invoke system calls and libraries.

Your own header files contain declarations for interfaces between the source files of your program. Each time you have a group of related declarations and macro definitions all or most of which are needed in several different source files, it is a good idea to create a header file for them.

Advantages

Including a header file produces the same results as copying the header file into each source file that needs it. Such copying would be time-consuming and error-prone. With a header file, the related declarations appear in only one place. If they need to be changed, they can be changed in one place, and programs that include the header file will automatically use the new version when next recompiled. The header file eliminates the labor of finding and changing all the copies as well as the risk that a failure to find one copy will result in inconsistencies within a program.

Convention

In C, the usual convention is to give header files names that end with .h. It is most portable to use only letters, digits, dashes, and underscores in header file names, and at most one dot.

Process

(Recall that in C, a declaration merely provides information that a function or variable exists and gives its type. For a function declaration, information about the types of its arguments might be provided as well. The purpose of declarations is to allow the compiler to correctly process references to the declared variables and functions. A definition, on the other hand, actually allocates storage for a variable or says what a function does.)

In order to use the facilities in the GNU C Library, you should be sure that your program source files include the appropriate header files. This is so that the compiler has declarations of these facilities available and can correctly process references to them. Once your program has been compiled, the linker resolves these references to the actual definitions provided in the archive file.

Header Forms

Header files are included into a program source file by the ‘#include’ preprocessor directive. The C language supports two forms of this directive; the first,

#include "header"

is typically used to include a header file header that you write yourself; this would contain definitions and declarations describing the interfaces between the different parts of your particular application. By contrast,

#include <file.h>

is typically used to include a header file file.h that contains definitions and declarations for a standard library. This file would normally be installed in a standard place by your system administrator. You should use this second form for the C library header files.

Typically, ‘#include’ directives are placed at the top of the C source file, before any other code. If you begin your source files with some comments explaining what the code in the file does (a good idea), put the ‘#include’ directives immediately afterwards, following the feature test macro definition (see Feature Test Macros).

Standard Library References

1. GNU C Reference Manual:
   http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/gnu-c-manual.html

   这个详细地列出了C语言的特征

2. cplusplus:
   http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/
   罗列了头文件：
   

3. cppreference
   http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/header