c - Manipulating the search path for include files

Question

My development environment is such that I have some_header.h in /usr/include and in /another/directory. /another/directory contains some header files I need to include in my program, but I want to use some_header.h from /usr/include. When I use

 gcc ... -I/another/directory

gcc uses /another/directory/some_header.h. If I use

 gcc ... -I/usr/include -I/another/directory

gcc does the same thing because it ignores /usr/include since it is part of the standard search path, but it gets searched after non standard directories included with -I.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Use the -iquote switch:

Include the files that are in another/directory using quotes:

#include "another_file.h"

Then use

gcc -iquote /another/include ...

to add a search path for quoted include files. This switch will add a directory that is searched for quoted include files after the current directory and before -I and system include paths.

Include your other include files using brackets (i.e. #include <header.h>).

See here for more information: Where are include files stored - Ubuntu Linux, GCC