Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!mailrus!umich!itivax!scs From: scs@itivax.UUCP (Steve C. Simmons) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Standards For C++ Message-ID: <275@itivax.UUCP> Date: 22 Sep 88 17:54:09 GMT References: <255@itivax.UUCP> <6590064@hplsla.HP.COM> Reply-To: scs@itivax.UUCP (Steve C. Simmons) Organization: Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor Lines: 36 In article <6590064@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM ( Jim Adcock) writes: >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. That's effectively what we'd get out of a standards effort. In fact, that's what happened with C. K&R defined the first standard, then people slowly and carefully added features. Time showed which ones survived and which ones didn't. If the first standard hadn't been there, we'd have probably seen much worse fragmentation. >Alternately [or in addition to], it might be nice if the >various compiler camps could come up with agreed upon definitions >of various "levels" . . . 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" . . . An interesting idea, but it's not clear if (a) there's a lot of value here or (b) how things could be broken down into heirarchies. Is multiple inheritance needed for parameterized types? Maybe better to say "here's a definition of the parameterized types extension", "here's a definition of the multiple inheritance extension", and then offer compilers with extension packages A, B, C, etc. Unfortunately I doubt that's much help for the compiler vendors. It's probably more work to develop/market/sell all the extensions separately than it is to do the whole ball of was. -- Steve Simmons ...!umix!itivax!scs Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor, MI. "You can't get here from here."