A ProgrammingLanguage.

Stroustrop decided that C was a neat idea, but needed more syntatic sugar. C++ has all the power and flexibility of C, with all new disadvantages.

Some of these disadvantages include:

• More type-safe meaning the compiler picks up more errors.
• Generic and type-safe programming via templates.
• Object orientation via 'virtual' functions and (multiple) inheritance.
• The StandardTemplateLibrary, or STL.
• iostreams as a replacement for printf(3).
• The string class not being fully compatible with (char ), so they are useless for lots of io. eg istream::getline(char , size_t) needs a character buffer, and can't take a string. same with read(char, size_t) and get(char, size_t); What is the point?!
• Creating a string with numbers in it from variables is awful - it's easier to revert back to C: char buffer[16?; snprintf(buffer,15,"output-%n.txt", counter); is more logical than strstream ss; ss << "output-" << counter << ".txt" ; string s; ss >> s;

No, they're the new syntatic sugar. :) Some of them are very very nice.

The all new disadvantages include:

• Your compiler will SegFault regularly instead of giving meaningful error reports when you stuff up a template definition
• You still have to manage memeory, but now it's harder to figure out who's doing what since it's all hidden behind syntatic sugar

(Stroustrop thought that Simula67 was a neat idea, but a garbage collector was "too slow". So he designed his own perfect object-oriented language that didn't have one. I'm not sure what he was thinking.) (The we have to get him to hook us up with his Supplier, he's obviously getting the Good Stuff)

As an example of template-based (in this case the STL) error reports in C++

/usr/include/stlport/stl/_hashtable.h: In method `size_t _STL::hashtable<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void <snip> /usr/include/stlport/stl/_hashtable.c:347: instantiated from `_STL::hashtable<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()>,CActionHandler::Keycode,_STL::hash<CActionHandler::Keycode>,_STL::_Select1st<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()> >,_STL::equal_to<CActionHandler::Keycode>,_STL::allocator<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()> > >::resize(unsigned int)' /usr/include/stlport/stl/_hashtable.c:169: instantiated from `_STL::hashtable<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()>,CActionHandler::Keycode,_STL::hash<CActionHandler::Keycode>,_STL::_Select1st<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()> >,_STL::equal_to<CActionHandler::Keycode>,_STL::allocator<_STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::)()> > >::_M_insert(const _STL::pair<const CActionHandler::Keycode,void (CActionHandler::*)()> &)' /usr/include/stlport/stl/_hash_map.h:188: instantiated from here /usr/include/stlport/stl/_hashtable.h:557: no match for call to `(const _STL::hash<CActionHandler::Keycode>) (const CActionHandler::Keycode &)'

You will notice the above actually has quite a few lines removed for brevities sake.

Perhaps a good reason to stay away from C++ and program in INTERCAL or PASL (or Java! - Jared).

Or to program in something like Ocaml, which has parametized types, classes and modules, which cover all the possible uses of C++ templates in a saner manner, AFAICT. --GlynWebster

CategoryProgrammingLanguages