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I'm fairly new to C++, but my understanding is that a #include statement will essentially just dump the contents of the #included file into the location of that statement. This means that if I have a number of '#include' and 'using' statements in my header file, my implementation file can just #include the header file, and the compiler won't mind if I don't repeat the other statements. What about people though? My main concern is that if I don't repeat the '#include', 'using', and also 'typedef' (now that I think of it) statements, it takes that information away from the file in which it's used, which could lead to confusion. I am just working on small projects at the moment where it won't really cause any issues, but I can imagine that in larger projects with more people working on them it could become a significant issue. An example follows: UPDATE: my function prototypes for 'Unit' have string, ostream and StringSet among their return types and parameters - I am not including anything in my header file that is used only in the implementation file. //Unit.h #include <string> #include <ostream> #include "StringSet.h" using std::string; using std::ostream; class Unit { public: //public members with string, ostream and StringSet //in their return values/parameter lists private: //private members //unrelated side-question: should private members //even be included in the header file? } ; //Unit.cpp #include "Unit.h" //The following are all redundant from a compiler perspective: #include <string> #include <ostream> #include "StringSet.h" using std::string; using std::ostream; //implementation goes here

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