Thread: From the standard

That just backs up what I've been stating, and since we're quoting Stroustrup -

Considering C a smaller, faster, and better specified alternative to C++ is another popular fallacy. The C-like subset of C++ is as fast, as well specified, and easier to deal with than C itself. One source of popularity of this fallacy is an unwillingness by some C/Pascal-level programmers not to learn something really new. Another is wishful thinking by some proponents of more advanced languages: after all, if C++ is simply a more complicated C it cannot be a serious competitor to a more advanced language.

Yes, that previous post was a positive for C++, however C and C++ have been growing apart. They have separate standards. To say that C++ is a superset of C is also a myth. C has moved on to improve its low level functionality while C++ has striven to improve it's STL.

>C has moved on to improve its low level functionality

How?

It's true C has moved on from when C with Classes was concieved, mainly due to the most recent C standard. However, it's an aim of the C++ standards commitee to bring them closer together and the new C++ standard will require as much of C99 be implemented in C++ as possible (if it's ever implemented in a C compiler ).

The standard commitees don't work in entire ignorance of what the other is doing, and features added by C99 were to some extent chosen so that they would also be easily included in future implementations of C++.

They are moving apart. I'll look for the article. I read it on Bjorne's web site.

This was stated by Herb Sutter (Secretary of the ISO/ANSI C++ standards committee) -

C99: The second official ISO/ANSI C Standard, published in 1999. This standard contains much that the C++ committee can be expected to adopt wholesale, or with minor modifications, as part of C++0x. After all, it's clear that the C++ committee values C compatibility, and the C committee has helped us by likewise valuing C++ compatibility, which has made some of C99's features easier to integrate into C++0x than they might otherwise have been. There are still some C99 features, however, that C++0x cannot easily adopt in their C99 form, because conflicting facilities already exist in C++98 (for example, complex is a class template in C++98 and a keyword in C99).

>LinuxWorld.com

See quote from Herb Sutter.

>Bjarne Stroustrup

I wouldn't be suprised if variable-length arrays were included in the next C++ standard, along with much of the other C99 extras (again see quote by Herb Sutter), some of which was added from C++ in the first place.

That leaves the in-built complex,imaginary and bool types. Unless your doing scientific programming I'd hardly call the first two a gaping chasm (in any case there's already support through the C++ library which would make porting trivial), and C++ already has its own built in bool type.

I don't see a chasm, just a schism.