Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!infopiz!lupine!rfg From: rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: What C++ Compiler should I buy? Message-ID: <2709@lupine.NCD.COM> Date: 16 Nov 90 03:23:25 GMT References: <3072@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <39546@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Organization: Network Computing Devices, Inc., Mt. View, CA Lines: 40 In article <39546@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes: +In article <3072@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>, fmbutt@mrbt.sw.stratus.com (Farooq Butt) writes: +Not true; g++ v1.37.1 is about the same distance from satisfying +E&S as cfront 2.0 is; I'd be very interested in knowing what measurment tools were used to derive this answer. I don't disagree with the answer (necessarily). I just would like to know how people think that they can make any sort of meaningful `distance' measurements between a language specification and a given implementation. +To be fair, most of the bugs in 1.37.1 seem related to multiple +inheritance and virtual base classes; some of these crash the +compiler. But the bug list for g++ isn't substantially longer than +the bug list for cfront. For the bug lists that I have, this is true. I believe that ratio was about 1.2/1 in favor of cfront 2.0, but then cfront 2.1 widened the gap a bit more (perhaps to 1.2/0.8). Anyway, please don't take take those numbers a meaning anything in particular. These are just the bugs I stumbled upon in each of these two products on dark nights when the power was out and I had no flashlight. The number of things that I stumble upon (and by the way... I was drinking at the time :-) are no indication of anything whatsoever. Even if they were, you would still need to factor in the *significance* and/or *severity* of each bug. Who cares if there is a bug in an implementation in some dark corner where no sane (and sober) programmer ever goes? Most of the bugs that I have found were found in just such places. -- // Ron Guilmette - C++ Entomologist // Internet: rfg@ncd.com uucp: ...uunet!lupine!rfg // Motto: If it sticks, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.