## 2.6.3. C Binding Issues

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We use the ANSI C declaration format. All MPI names have an `MPI_` prefix, defined constants are in all capital letters, and defined types and functions have one capital letter after the prefix. Programs must not declare variables or functions with names beginning with the prefix `MPI_`. To support the profiling interface, programs should not declare functions with names beginning with the prefix `PMPI_`.

The definition of named constants, function prototypes, and type definitions must be supplied in an include file mpi.h.

Almost all C functions return an error code. The successful return code will be MPI_SUCCESS, but failure return codes are implementation dependent.

Type declarations are provided for handles to each category of opaque objects.

Array arguments are indexed from zero.

Logical flags are integers with value 0 meaning ``false'' and a non-zero value meaning ``true.''

Choice arguments are pointers of type `void *`.

Address arguments are of MPI defined type MPI_Aint. File displacements are of type MPI_Offset. MPI_Aint is defined to be an integer of the size needed to hold any valid address on the target architecture. MPI_Offset is defined to be an integer of the size needed to hold any valid file size on the target architecture.

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MPI-2.0 of July 18, 1997
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