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What are the differences between #import and #include in Objective-C and are there times where you should use one over the other? Is one deprecated?
I was reading the following tutorial: http://www.otierney.net/objective-c.html#preamble and its paragraph about #import and #include seems to contradict itself or at least is unclear.
The #import directive was added to Objective-C as an improved version of #include. Whether or not it’s improved, however, is still a matter of debate. #import ensures that a file is only ever included once so that you never have a problem with recursive includes. However, most decent header files protect themselves against this anyway, so it’s not really that much of a benefit.
Basically, it’s up to you to decide which you want to use. I tend to #import headers for Objective-C things (like class definitions and such) and #include standard C stuff that I need. For example, one of my source files might look like this: