This is really not the right forum for discussing general C programming questions like this.
It's generally best to put the extern in a .h file to ensure that it is consistently declared in all places it is used. Do not put an initializer on the extern declaration. Do put an initializer on the definition of the variable in the .c file. See section 4.8 of "C: A Reference Manual" by Harbison and Steele for why this will help avoid problems when switching between C compilers. The use of extern affects which parts of the source code have access to a variable (scope). That's a different issue than how long the variable will survive with it's value intact (lifetime). The book I mentioned above is a pretty good one for general questions like this. -- Peter Epstein -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
