Thread: Advantage of C to C++

Hi,
I have heard that C++ is almost a superset of C. Can anyone please tell me what can one do in C which we can't in C++


Thanks

C++ is an object-oriented language. It facilitates all of the main principles of object orientation( data abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, etc. ), and it allows for you to express your program in terms of objects instead of modules or functions. It is not a pure object oriented language like Java, Smalltalk, or Eiffel which force you to express your program entirely with objects. The great thing about C++ is that it supports all of the major programming paradigms and styles, but it does not force any one of them, allowing the programmer to express their program with the paradigm they deem most fit. C++ brings a lot more to the table than just object orientation, and I find it hard to refer to C++ as a mere superset of C, though I suppose it technically is. There's nothing that can be done with C that can't be done with C++.

>So you can have variable length arrays in C++?

You'd have to allocate them dynamically but yes. Or in cases where appropriate, you could use a vector

>You can not cast void * when assigning to another pointer in C++?

You'll almost never need to use void pointers in C++(as my highly criticized sig would indicate)

There's a C way to do things and there's a C++ way to do things. If you use C-inspired code with C++, you might run into some slight pitfalls here and there, but the general idea is that C++ can do anything that C can.

If you're programming on microcontrollers and the like, you are more likely to be using C than C++ (as it is, I believe, considered too bloated for such applications), but perhaps someone with more experience with this can elaborate.

C++ and C are not entirely compatible, but largely are. Most C code that I have run into in general applications would be perfectly legal (or very close) in C++.

Originally Posted by Hunter2

>>You can not cast void * when assigning to another pointer in C++?
Isn't void* practically the same as unsigned char* (or char*), other than the fact that you can't dereference it?

Not on all machines. On some machines the sizeof (void *) is different then sizeof(char *)

There's a C way to do things and there's a C++ way to do things.

Even so there are some things that C can do that C++ can not even if there is a way to simulate them.

Some will claim that C is actually faster because its a "lower-level" language

Lower-level != faster in all cases.

When I was doing a report on Pascal vs C I wrote some basic test programs and the pascal program ran faster then the C program.