What is a "translation unit" in C++

A translation unit is any preprocessed source file.

A translation unit is the basic unit of compilation in C++. This unit is made up of the contents of a single source file after it passes through preprocessing. It contains included any header files without blocks that are ignored using conditional preprocessing statements like ifdef, ifndef, etc.

A single translation unit can be compiled into an object file, library, or executable program.

Srinivas Gorla

Updated on: 30-Jul-2019

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