Can header exist without being a file?

Question

In C: The Complete Reference, Herbert Schildt says that

Headers are usually files, but they are not necessarily files. It is permissible for a compiler to predefine the contents of a header internaly. However for all practical purposes, the standard c headers are contained in files that correspond to their names.

How can a header exist without being a file? What's the theme of this passage? Because the .h file extension is used with a header.

Answer 1

The C Standard does make a difference between header and source files referred to by #include preprocessing directives:

6.10.2 Source file inclusion

Constraints

1 A #include directive shall identify a header or source file that can be processed by the implementation.

Semantics

2 A preprocessing directive of the form

# include <h-char-sequence> new-line

searches a sequence of implementation-defined places for a header identified uniquely by the specified sequence between the < and > delimiters, and causes the replacement of that directive by the entire contents of the header. How the places are specified or the header identified is implementation-defined.

3 A preprocessing directive of the form

# include "q-char-sequence" new-line

causes the replacement of that directive by the entire contents of the source file identified by the specified sequence between the " delimiters. The named source file is searched for in an implementation-defined manner. If this search is not supported, or if the search fails, the directive is reprocessed as if it read

# include <h-char-sequence> new-line

with the identical contained sequence (including > characters, if any) from the original directive.

The compiler may implement a scheme where standard headers are not actually stored as files in the file system. But the directive #include "filename.h" is specified as searching first for a file in a system specific way, and then searching standard headers as if the directive had been #include <filename.h>

Note that the filename extensions .c and .h are purely a convention to distinguish files containing declarations and files containing actual code and data definitions. Nothing in the Standard makes this convention a requirement, beyond the names used for the standard headers. Some people use other conventions with different extensions or no extensions at all for specific needs, but the vast majority of C programmers would regard this as bad practice.

Shafik Yaghmour provided a quote from the C99 Rationale in an answer to a similar question that nails the committees intent on this matter: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27262904/4593267

Answer 2

The C standard explicitly says that a header is a file, so I think not.

6.10.2 Source file inclusion

A #include directive shall identify a header or source file that can be processed by the implementation.

However, what counts as a file for the given system is implementation-defined. It could in theory be a hardware port, a pipe or some some other silliness. Most of the major OS have the possibility to treat ports or pipes as files (for example in Windows, files and hardware ports are opened with the same function.)