A Visual Guide of the C++ Compilation Process

We seem to get a lot of threads asking about headers, definition and redefinition errors, including cpp files, etc... so it is time for diagrams (but first, some words)!A typical C/C++ compiler consists of several pieces: the preprocessor, the parser, the lexer, the linker, code generator, code optimization, etc... but for the purpose of simplicity I'm going to refer to the whole "package" as "