CPP++

[Steven T. Hatton]

Yes, I know I could ask this on comp.std.c++. At this point in my thinking
about the topic, it doesn't seem fromal enough to bring up there.

This seems like such a blatantly obvious idea that I believe it cannot be
new. I know there are some experienced C++ programmers who believe the CPP
is detrimental to the general use of C++. One reason the CPP is
indispensable is C compatability. There are some who believe the CPP is
also harmful to C. A unified effort to find a superior alternative to the
CPP may be worth persuing. Be that as it may, another approach might be
to extend the CPP with C++ specific features.

Does anybody know of efforts to do this? I specifically mean efforts
intended for standardization.

One problem that crossed my mind while contemplating the implementation of a
CPP++ that would effectively override the CPP is that trying to exclude
macro definitions such as are specified in the Standard C Library might
break C++ implementations which rely on these.

Rumor has it, Stroustrup may have been working on something along these
lines lately. Any truth to that?

 

[Victor Bazarov]

Yes, I know I could ask this on comp.std.c++. At this point in my thinking
about the topic, it doesn't seem fromal enough to bring up there.

You don't need to be formal to ask a standardization-related question in
comp.std.c++.

[..]
Does anybody know of efforts to do this? I specifically mean efforts
intended for standardization.

Somebody in comp.std.c++ might actually know about it.

[...]
Rumor has it, Stroustrup may have been working on something along these
lines lately. Any truth to that?

Why don't you ask him? He has his e-mail address published on his web
page, doesn't he?

V

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Steven T. Hatton:

Yes, I know I could ask this on comp.std.c++. At this point in my thinking
about the topic, it doesn't seem fromal enough to bring up there.

This seems like such a blatantly obvious idea that I believe it cannot be
new. I know there are some experienced C++ programmers who believe the CPP
is detrimental to the general use of C++. One reason the CPP is
indispensable is C compatability. There are some who believe the CPP is
also harmful to C. A unified effort to find a superior alternative to the
CPP may be worth persuing. Be that as it may, another approach might be
to extend the CPP with C++ specific features.

Does anybody know of efforts to do this? I specifically mean efforts
intended for standardization.

No, but there's a lot of exploration. The Boost library has a truly mind-
boggling preprocessor library based on just the features we have, taking
things to their utter limits. And the Spirit folks (Spirit is part of
Boost) have implemented a preprocessor called Wave, which as I understand it
has been adopted into Boost -- although I don't see it there yet.