Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!keele!nott-cs!gas
From: gas@cs.nott.ac.uk (Alan Shepherd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: extern "C"
Message-ID: <1990Oct10.062518.23722@cs.nott.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Oct 90 06:25:18 GMT
Reply-To: gas@cs.nott.ac.uk (Alan Shepherd)
Organization: Nottingham University
Lines: 19


I've had several responses to my original question about extern "C".
As a summary, I wanted to know why it was necessary to prototype
functions within the scope of an extern "C" declaration rather than
treat 'extern "c" foo()' as an old-style C compiler would.  Most
people have basically said that it's necessary for prototyping.
Someone pointed out that 'extern "C" foo(...)' would do what I wanted,
but this syntax failed for declaring a pointer to a function - I had
to cast everything explicitly (is there any way in C++ to declare a
pointer to a general fn, rhater than specific types ?)

However, all the solutions seem to rule out the possibility of using C
header files within C++.  This (at least for the time being when a lot
of extremely useful software e.g. isode package is written in C) is
crazy.  G++ actually does the sensible (in my view anyway :-)) thing
and I would use that in preference to AT&T anyday were it not for
other software constraints.

Alan Shepherd