Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!jima From: jima@hplsla.HP.COM ( Jim Adcock) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Standards For C++ Message-ID: <6590064@hplsla.HP.COM> Date: 19 Sep 88 16:53:59 GMT References: <255@itivax.UUCP> Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA Lines: 46 At this point in time what I'd rather see is an agreed upon "subset" of the language that we could expect all "C++" compilers to accept -- while still allowing the various compiler camps to experiment with new features that may prove to be generally useful above and beyond this core set. I'd pretty much like the "agreed upon" core set of the language to be pretty much the stuff that bs has described up through and including multiple inheritence. Let people continue to work on the "unsolved" problems like parameterized classes, multiprocessing, error recovery, memory management, dynamic linking of new classes..... .... and when good solutions to these problems are proven out in various people's compilers then maybe we can begin to include these features in the language at large. Still, one has to wonder if the set of language features really needed to solve "the programming problem" at large isn't a larger set than the average programmer would want to bite off anyway? Which might imply that ultimately C++ compilers might head in the direction of a core feature set, plus optional goodies for people with more specialized needs. Alternately [or in addition to], it might be nice if the various compiler camps could come up with agreed upon definitions of various "levels" of the C++ language so that we could know what major features of the "C++ language" are going to be available to us when we buy a particular vendor's compiler. For example, a "level 1" implementation of a C++ compiler might only support single inheritence, a "level 2" implementation of a C++ compiler might mean that multiple inheritence is supported, "level 3" implementations of the language might support parameterized classes ...... This would allow vendors to offer conforming implementations of "C++" at various levels of sophistication, and customers would then have reasonable expectations and knowledge of what it is they're really buying.