Bob Proulx wrote: > My opinion (which counts for very little here) is that while C++ is > designed to be as close to C as possible, but no closer, that it is > still not C. C++ is not a strict superset of C. It is close but not > perfect.
True. Regarding struct and enum type definitions, you have to work out a set of idioms so that you can write code that is valid in both languages. > In particular many of the memory handling parts are not > compatible. I didn't find this to be a problem. I can use malloc, xmalloc, free etc. in C++ as well. > Silencing bogus C++ errors and warnings also silences > valid C errors and warnings. In C++, you get errors for casts from 'void *' to 'something *'. You then add casts at these places. Never did these added casts silence valid C warnings, for me. > It is possible to craft an environment using defines and inlines to > make conditional compilation compile C in the C compiler and C++ in > the C++ compiler to force it compile cleanly with either but this > means the result is less than optimal in either too. This sounds weirder than it is. #ifdefs for C++ are only needed in very few places: - in headers, around the 'extern "C"' boilerplate, - when you define an 'alignof' macro. > I have worked on projects where people have tried to be both a C > project and a C++ project at the same time. I found that C++ > programmers were always making C mistakes and C programmers were > always making C++ mistakes. True. You need to document clearly the idioms for programming in the intersection between C and C++. And adjust your "make distcheck" target to verify also the compilation in C++ mode. > And neither were allowed to program in > their language of choice but instead were forced into the least common > denominator overlay that we created. Yes, the wealth of features of C++ is tempting. But in the end, you end up thinking 50% of the time about the weird design of the C++ language features, rather than on the problem you are programming. You can program in C subconciously. In C++, you can't. Bruno
