What is the difference between .cc and .cpp file extensions?
From Google, I learned that they are both from the C++ language, but I am unsure of differences between them.
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75`.cpp` is 1 character longer – Prix Sep 03 '13 at 10:40
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11For added bonus, there's also, `.cp`, `.c++`, `.cxx` and `.C`. – Hasturkun Sep 03 '13 at 11:02
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Since the Linux kernel is written in C, are you sure those `.cc` files were even in C++? – user4815162342 Sep 03 '13 at 11:39
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11Do you want [Hamming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance) or [Levenshtein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance)? – sehe Sep 03 '13 at 11:43
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2Hamming does not apply to strings of different lengths – Harper Dec 17 '20 at 16:48
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3Um, reopen? The question does not ask which is better, it asks what is the difference. – Klesun Mar 18 '21 at 20:20
4 Answers
280
Conventions.
Historically, the suffix for a C++ source file was .C.
This caused a few problems the first time C++ was ported
to a system where case wasn't significant in the filename.
Different users adopted different solutions: .cc,
.cpp, .cxx and possibly others. Today, outside of the Unix
world, it's mostly .cpp. Unix seems to use .cc more often.
For headers, the situation is even more confusing: for whatever
reasons, the earliest C++ authors decided not to distinguish
between headers for C and for C++, and used .h.
This doesn't cause any problems if there is no C in the project, but when you
start having to deal with both, it's usually a good idea to
distinguish between the headers which can be used in C (.h)
and those which cannot (.hh or .hpp).
In addition, in C++, a lot of users (including myself) prefer keeping the template
sources and the inline functions in a separate file. Which,
while strictly speaking a header file, tends to get yet another
set of conventions (.inl, .tcc and probably a lot of
others).
In the case of headers it makes absolutely no difference to the compiler.
In the case of source files different endings will cause the compiler to assume a different
language. But this can normally be overridden, and I used .cc
with VC++ long before VC++ recognized it as C++.
tosh
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James Kanze
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How can I configure Visual Studio to treat a file as C++ if it is not already recognised as such? – Avi Chapman Mar 05 '21 at 00:43
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@AviChapman, you probably can try [files.associations](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/identifiers) – Xiang Mar 10 '21 at 16:17
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There is no difference. They're exactly the same.
Alon Gubkin
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This is now the first google result for "difference between .cc file and .cpp" – Freddy Mcloughlan Apr 11 '23 at 10:36
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Technically for the compiler there is no difference. However, some compilers and/or build systems will guess how to compile your files based on the extension and may or may not detect "cc" (or "cpp" but that is more rare I guess) as a c++ file.
Dentoid
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Actually it all depends on what you and your compiler prefer. There is no difference between them at all.
Bodhi
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