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Oh! Thanks, I was not being as concrete as I imagined. Sorry.

Yes, the `static` can simply be dropped, it does no additional work for a single-file snippet like this.

I tried diving into Compiler Explorer to examine this, and it actually produces slightly different code for the with/without `static` cases, but it was confusing to deeply understand quickly enough to use the output here. Sorry.

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I see exactly the same assembly from x86-64 GCC 15.2 with -O2 the first example in the article both as is and without `static`, which makes sense. The two do differ if you add -fPIC, as though you’re compiling a dynamic library, and do not add -fvisibility=hidden at the same time, but that’s because Linux dynamic linking is badly designed.

TU-level concepts (mostly) dissolve during the linking stage. You need to compile with -c to generate an object file in order to see the distinction.

Also, the difference manifests in the symbols table, not the assembly.

To clarify, I was talking about Compiler Explorer-cleaned disassembly, same as the comment I was replying to.

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