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Global Functions

It is sometimes appropriate to write global functions to act on class objects, rather than creating class member functions. As a general rule, you should do this if there is no class object state preserved from one function call to the next, and all of the information about the class object/s can be obtained from the public interface. However, for reasons of namespace management it is often advised if there exists a strong binding between the class and the global function, to make the global function a static member of the class; or use the namespace keyword. There are two places where global functions may be declared and defined: as part of the .cc and .h files of the class they are most closely associated with, or in their own, separate .cc and .h files. Use these criteria to decide:

1. If there is a large conceptual distance between the functions and the class, then it is probably best to use separate files.
2. If there are a large number of related global functions, use separate files.
3. If the functions are templated, using separate files (at least separate implementation files) will reduce template instantiation dependencies.