Thread: OO in C

Originally Posted by MartinR

By bad formatting I meant the fact that the author doesn't use curly braces

One way to get around this for small amounts of code like this is to type it out yourself. That way you will unconciously reformat it to your liking, add notes as needed, etc. You can easily add braces everywhere you want them, rename variables, etc. Example:

Code:

#if !defined MAXHEAP || MAXHEAP < 1
#define MAXHEAP 10
#endif

static int heap[MAXHEAP];

void *new_(const void *type, ...) // I'm calling it new_ to make this easier
                                  // to use with C++ compilers.
{
    for (int *p = heap+1; p<heap+MAXHEAP; ++p) {
        if (*p == NULL) {
            break;
        }
    }
    assert(p < heap+MAXHEAP);
    *p = MAXHEAP; /* Before an object is added to a set, we let it contain the
                     impossible index value MAXHEAP so that new() cannot find
                     it again. (See p.5) */
    return p;
}

If you prefer you can also use automatic formatter programs like GNU indent to do much of the work for you.

Originally Posted by MartinR

megafiddle, thanks for reply. By bad formatting I meant the fact that the author doesn't use curly braces - even in code snippet you have posted, no curly braces in case of for loop, if condition also lack braces. Therefore code is harder to read, bad practice. You are right that his code doesn't retun local variable but it doesn't change the fact that he passes argument and doesn't use it. So to summarize, I don't consider this book as a good one. Not to mention his examples are awkward...

Ok, sorry. With the indentation present, I found it easy to follow, probably because I generally don't use braces except where necessary.

Anyway, This may explain the lack of use of the argument type:

"Just like Set.h this file is protected by a preprocessor symbol NEW_H. The text only
shows the interesting parts of each new file, the source diskette contains the complete
code of all examples.

The full source code may be available somewhere online. I just discovered I need to look for it myself.

-

I understand the concepts here, but if really want to learn OOP why not learn
C++ "on the side"? More tools in the language tool kit is never a bad thing, Even
if you never use C++ professionally, you have an understanding of how deep
and complex OOP can be.