John Wildberger <wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> writes:

On December 29, 2003 01:37 pm, Tim Writer wrote:

...

By now, you should be convinced that porting the original program from C to C++ yielded no benefits whatsoever at the cost of additional complexity, portability problems, and clumsiness. Note, I'm not saying that's true for every program but this particular program was not a good candidate.

I think you are missing a point here. I t was never my intention to port the program from c to c++ for the purpose of improving the program. It was solely a learning experience and as such it served its purpose very well. I learned how to apply C99 standards and after some struggling I even managed to use the proper formatting tools in C++.

And hopefully you learned that this type of program isn't a good candidate for translation to C++. :-)

The program itself is rather useless and can now be discarded.

Yep.

C++ is not the preferred programming language for most Linux aficionados.

Agreed, although it's an important one for Linux as KDE is written in C++.

They prefere standard C instead. The kernel does not have a single part written in C++. However, there is a lot of potential in C++, and anyone interested to write programs for his/hers use will find it very useful and powerful. To reap the full benefit it is necessary to get familiar with its syntax and structure.

Yes, but it's important to choose examples that benefit from C++; otherwise, you'll just get frustrated. Afterall, the syntax is mostly compatible with C and you only break new ground when you get into features like classes and templates. You won't learn a lot from a more or less mechanical translation of a procedural C program to C++. Of course, as a new C++ user, you might not yet be aware of the kinds of programs which benefit from C++.

Extra complexity is introduced for portability reason.

Unfortunately, C++ has not lived up to its promise of portability. The language is so complex that few environments implement the same subset and its often difficult to move a C++ program from one compiler to another on the same platform, let alone from one platform to another.

If you should not care for portability you can make things a lot simpler. e.g use the simple types like int, char, float etc instead of the C99 types.

The C99 types exist to assist with portability. Clearly, programmers should avoid dealing with exact size types but some programs, such as your example, require them. Using "int16_t" when you need a 16 bit quantity is much more portable than using "short" and assuming its 16 bits. If you're worried a given platform won't have the C99 headers, you can always include a copy with your source code (with appropriate #ifdefs etc. to handle different platforms).

But as always, it is good to know the later forms, so that you can at least read programs written by other people.

Agreed. Unfortunately, C++ is so large and has changed so much since its inception many people use more or less disjoint subsets. If you're learning C++ for fun, consider another language instead, unless perhaps you're planning to do some KDE development. C++ can be incredibly frustrating; I know from bitter experience. If you don't already know them, learning a language like Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, or Scheme will be a lot more fun. -- tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> starnix inc. 905.771.0017 ext. 225 thornhill, ontario, canada http://www.starnix.com professional linux services & products -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml