* Alexander S. <alex0pla...@gmail.com> [2013-11-07 04:27:26 +0400]: > Seriously, simple parametric types wouldn't hurt C. Not at all. No > need for that automatic pointer conversion, additional parameters to > sort() and alike, and such. (I'm going to make a confession, I really > think C would benefit from C++ templates, even in their current > state).
c has no implicit pointer conversion other than for void* void* is important to represent pointers in a generic way, parametric types do not help with this, those assume a statically known type which is not always the case the way c++ eliminated the implicit conversion is actually less safe than the c semantics: in c++ one has to use casts to convert void* and this turns off the type-checker there are plenty source for void pointers: mmap, dlsym, context pointers for callbacks, etc. if you incorrectly assume in c that a pointer is void* then you get a type error, in c++ your cast will mask this error so it can go unnoticed, in c a cast is a code smell that alarms you, in c++ they are not uncommon at all in code interacting with the os, actually c++ has at least 4 different casts with different semantics based on what you cast, this is not how to improve safety parametric types have problems on their own: eg the type parameters have to be encoded into the name of the interface which gives rise to name mangling with all its warts (c++ name mangling is not specified so you get a fragile binary interface with names so long that the hash lookups by the elf dynamic loader becomes a bottleneck..)
