* Ossama Othman said: Hi, Ossama > > implementation on the GNU platform, which is now in its young days - it's > > constantly changing, the features are being added, standard being > > implemented in more and more detail. This situation will no doubt incurr > > many changes both in the source code of the programs (new keywords, syntax > > changed at places, library classes etc.) but also in the generated binaries > > interfaces - esp in the shared libraries. > > I don't believe that the situation is nearly as bad as you depict it. > A few years ago I would agree with you but the fact that there is now a > standard means that the standard C++ APIs/keywords/syntax will generally > not change. The standards don't change that fast, but I'm talking about the _implementation_. The g++ compiler still has problems and unimplemented standard C++ elements - again, rtti and exceptions come to mind, not to mention templates. And I remember how did the C++ interface, in binary libraries, changed when Borland added exceptions, rtti and templates to their compilers. One had to recompile everything to link against the code produced with the new tools. > > > fairly stable in terms of existing language feature support. Stuff > > > like RTTI and exception handling aren't major issues since they can > > > easily be disabled. > > But it DOES change the binary representation of the program, esp. name > > mangling - which is the major headache with C++ right now. > > Again, I don't think the name mangling issue is so bad. Then again, I > program exclusively in C++ so I am admittedly biased toward it. You said it :))) - it's really a pain in the neck to interface the C++ libs from C or any other language for that matter... Especially if you want your C code to be cross-platform. All the major vendors use different mangling schemes AFAIR - Borland, WATCOM, Micro$oft and last, but certainly not least - the GNU compiler. regards, marek
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