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copied!<p>It depends on what you mean by "acceptable".</p> <p>There are two senses in which slashes are acceptable and backslashes are not.</p> <p>If you're writing C99, C++03, or C1x, backslashes are undefined, while slashes are legal, so in this sense, backslashes are not acceptable.</p> <p>But this is irrelevant for most people. If you're writing C++1x, where backslashes are conditionally-supported, and the platform you're coding for supports them, they're acceptable. And if you're writing an "extended dialect" of C99/C++03/C1x that defines backslashes, same deal. And, more importantly, this notion of "acceptable" is pretty meaningless in most cases anyway. None of the C/C++ standards define what slashes mean (or what backslashes mean when they're conditionally-supported). Header names are mapped to source files in an implementation-defined manner, period. If you've got a hierarchy of files, and you're asking whether to use backslashes or slashes to refer to them portably in #include directives, the answer is: neither is portable. If you want to write truly portable code, you can't use hierarchies of header files—in fact, arguably, your best bet is to write everything in a single source file, and not #include anything except standard headers.</p> <p>However, in the real world, people often want "portable-enough", not "strictly portable". The POSIX standard mandates what slashes mean, and even beyond POSIX, most modern platforms—including Win32 (and Win64), the cross-compilers for embedded and mobile platforms like Symbian, etc.—treat slashes the POSIX way, at least as far as C/C++ #include directives. Any platform that doesn't, probably won't have any way for you to get your source tree onto it, process your makefile/etc., and so on, so #include directives will be the least of your worries. If that's what you care about, then slashes are acceptable, but backslashes are not.</p>

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