Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!mintaka!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Were GNU C extensions proposed for the standard?
Keywords: ANSI, GNU, typeof, inline, alignof
Message-ID: <2304@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 24 Jan 90 21:36:55 GMT
References: <153@dy4.UUCP> <15714@haddock.ima.isc.com> <IJ81DV3ggpc2@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 17

In article <IJ81DV3ggpc2@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
<< I believe the Committee thought (as I do) that extending the preprocessor in
<< that direction is a dead end, since inline functions provide a much cleaner
<< and more powerful way to do most of the same tasks.
<Is this really a reasonable argument, given that inline functions aren't in
<the standard?

Yes. Inline functions are a standard part of C++. Since Ansi C has already
borrowed a lot of features from C++ (prototyping, const), and the use and
implementation of inline functions is proven, there is no point to inventing
preprocessor kludges to do the same thing.

Since the ANSI standardization of C++ is under way, there is not much point
in a subsequent standard for C that is not C++.

It comes down to, if you want inline functions, use C++. It really ain't that
bad, and C++ compilers are more available than ANSI C compilers!