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From: alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ vs Objective-C
Message-ID: <185@geovision.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Sep-87 11:33:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: geovisio.185
Posted: Fri Sep 25 11:33:56 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Sep-87 02:42:51 EDT
References: <3405@ece-csc.UUCP> <638@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <1811@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <1971@tekig5.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer)
Organization: Geovision Corporation, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 28
Xref: dciem comp.lang.misc:633 comp.lang.smalltalk:302 comp.lang.c++:401

In article <1971@tekig5.TEK.COM> tomm@tekig5.UUCP (Tom Milligan) writes:
>
>Both Objective-C and C++ are C language Preprocessors.  Thus the capablility

    Sorry, no.  Objective-C is indeed a preprocessor, but C++ is a C superset
and the C++ 'program' is actually a *compiler* for the language C++.  It
is C++ (specifically the 'cfront' pass) that does the syntactic and semantic
analysis.

>exists in both to write "standard" C code.  And both produce as their output,
>"standard" C code.  Both provide extenstions to the C language to support the 

   The release version of C++ does happen to use your existing C compiler
as a code-generator.  However, the output from C++ is a C-language version
of the internal parse tree, ie new code, not the old code with the C++
extensions translated.   I understand that the C++ compiler used internally
at Bell Labs bypasses this step.

>and that this makes things un-unified is bogus.  There are only C structures 
>in both C++ and Objective-C.
     Maybe in terms of the structures, perhaps.  But in terms of what
  a program in the language *looks* like, C++ is far more unified.  I think
  Objective-C does far more violence to the syntax of C than does C++.
-- 
 Alastair JW Mayer     BIX: al
                      UUCP: ...!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!geovision!alastair

 "What we really need is a good 5-cent/gram launch vehicle."