replaced prototyped pseudo-private functions with file-scoped functions in the module core

Signed-off-by: Ayudh Das <ayudh.d@gmail.com>
removed unnecessary comments and fixed the failing test case

Signed-off-by: Ayudh Das <ayudh.d@gmail.com>
Merge pull request #727 from ayudhDas/issue-705

replaced prototyped pseudo-private functions with file-scoped functions ...