Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!voder!pyramid!octopus!sjsumcs!horstman
From: horstman@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Cay Horstmann)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: Proposed: "closures"
Keywords: proposal, closures, function pointers
Message-ID: <1991May10.003304.12390@mathcs.sjsu.edu>
Date: 10 May 91 00:33:04 GMT
References: <1991Apr26.023303.12141@kestrel.edu> <1991Apr28.231328.2064@world.std.com> <1991Apr30.201532.13706@kestrel.edu>
Distribution: comp.std.c++
Organization: San Jose State University - Math/CS Dept.
Lines: 36

In article <1991Apr30.201532.13706@kestrel.edu> gyro@kestrel.edu (Scott Layson Burson) writes:
>
>But it doesn't matter -- I've been chatting with Jerry Schwartz about
>this, and it turns out he has already made a suggestion along rather
>different lines (in document X3J16/91-0011), which is to treat `extern
>"C"' as though it were part of the type of the function or function
>pointer; so there would be a distinction between
>
>   extern "C" void (*f)();
>
>and
>
>   void (*f)();
>
>I like this a lot: the ugliness of the solution is exactly symmetrical
>with the ugliness of the problem, which to me is the definition of an
>elegant solution.  

Good. This is pretty important stuff on DOS machines (and probably on others)
that use a "Pascal" calling convention for C++ functions and a C calling
convention for (you guessed it) C functions. 

And it really shows the bankrupcy of the C style declaration syntax that
jumbles up
   - the name of the object to be declared
   - its type
   - its storage class
in a hopeless way. 

Just out of curiosity: Suppose I have a variable f that holds a pointer
to a "C" style void->void function and I want to make f local to its source
file, do I say

   static extern "C" void (*f)();

Cay