[Python-Dev] ANSIfication problems: warnings in marshal.c

[Thomas Wouters]

On Mon, Jul 24, 2000 at 08:21:03AM +0300, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Tim Peters wrote:

> > At the O'Reilly conference, it was announced that the Perl rewrite in C++
> > (codenamed Topaz) has been abandoned.  I didn't attend that session, but my
> > impression from others is that they attempted to model Perl objects directly
> > by C++ objects, and were frustrated by the consequent lack of low-level
> > control.

> As another data-point, I've heard from reliable sources that Topaz was
> written to use bleeding edge C++, including all manners of weird
> templates.
> C++ I might  be able to live with, but a very least common denominator C++
> -- otherwise you hurt the well-known Python portability, which is a major
> strength.

Tim himself stated that himself, in the very mail you half-quoted ;) C++ has
some nice features, and it has a lot of (IMHO) not very nice features.
Though I have to admit I'm not that up to speed in C++ features, I have seen
C++ code do things that scared me shitless. They also have me wondering how
efficient the generated code can be.

Using C++ will hurt portability regardless, though. Not only because there
are less C++ compilers than C compilers, but also because less people know
C++ than C, and the *act* of porting gets harder.

However, I do see some merit in making the current code compilable for a C++
compiler, and perhaps offering some extentions in the form of templates or
such like Tim suggested. I haven't looked at that CXX thing, though, and I
don't know if it (or direct extention code written C++) would benifit from
a C++-compilable Python. In the mean time, it helps finding old
prototype-less functions ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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