Re: [Sheflug] c++ & mem

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Al" == Alex Hudson <home [at] alexhudson.com> writes:

    >> Actually, as C++ is defined as a superset of C, both of those
    >> programs _are_ C++. It's just that one of them is also C ;)

    Al> Crikey! That means practically everything in Linux is written
    Al> in C++! And they say free software developers shun the
    Al> language.....

    Al> Hmmm ;) I don't think that's what most people refer to as
    Al> "C++" ;)) The "language" refers to more than just the
    Al> definition, I would include the ABI, the STL, and everything
    Al> else which makes C++ C++. While (most) C will compile with a
    Al> C++ compiler, esp. with extern "C" {, I can also do things
    Al> like

    #define    BEGIN    {
    #define    END        }

    Al> . and start compiling Ada with g++ too. At some point, the
    Al> definition becomes stretched ;)

I see your point, but I think you're missing the big point in the
thread.  Since C++ is a superset of C, blocks of code in C style can
be used where (a) efficiency is extremely important or (b) it's
convenient for some reason.

The original poster happened to want to test whether he could get a
working program built with g++; a C-style hello world program is
perfectly appropriate for that.  The only problem is that language
bigots will take you to ask for using stdout instead of cout.  This is
a very unusual application in that the whole program was written
C-style.  Normally most of the program would use C++ facilities a lot.

Agreed, if you're going to use a C++ compiler, you should take
advantage of it to write more robust, readable programs.  OTOH, I
should note that several of my codevelopers on XEmacs build XEmacs
with one or more C++ compilers by default, simply to enforce certain
coding conventions that apply to both C and C++.

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