What is the point of "stdafx.h"?

Question

jagatuba · Answer

Isn't that an allergy medicine?

anonymous · Answer

It's included in every new Visual Studio C++ project

anonymous · Answer

ahh it seems to be a "pre-compiled header"

jagatuba · Answer

Yes

jagatuba · Answer

Theoretically it should save time since the headers don't have to be re-parsed.

anonymous · Answer

right

anonymous · Answer

It used to be a header file for "Application Framework Extensions", a set of functionality that was later extended into MFC. MFC was then deprecated and abandoned, but the header file lived on as a precompiled header.
It's commonly used to just include everything your project needs and precompile it, but that's a double edged sword. On one hand, you can group a bunch of includes in a single header file, on the other, that's simply bad practice because it counteracts modularization and can actually significantly increase compile times when you modify header files. Technically you should avoid using the #include directive in header files - because it means every file that includes your header, will also include everything your header includes, and so on.