Re: apple blocks extension

[Ed Smith-Rowland <3dw4rd@verizon.net>]

Richard Henderson wrote:
> On 09/15/2009 08:28 AM, Vincent R. wrote:
>> I just was curious to know if closures in apple gcc(called blocks from
>> what I read) is
>> also in mainline.
>> What is the status about this extension ?
>
> It is unlikely that this will ever be brought into GCC, since
> it appears to be largely identical to the C++0x Lambda feature.
>
>  http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2006/n1968.pdf
>
>
> r~
>
I agree that it is superfluous for C++ at this stage but it might be 
nice for Objective-C (regular C) although Objective-C++ will then have 
to be taught how to deal with it somehow anyway.

OTOH, with lambdas it might be more easy to put this in.*  It is 
probably just a special case of lambdas.  We'd have to find out which 
one of course.  I think syntactically it shouldn't be too bad.**

In general, and this has come up before, there are other things in 
Objective-C 2.0 that we don't have.  IIRC the Apple trees left behind 
are a little old and not in good shape.  What are the licensing issues 
for borrowing from LLVM leaving aside the technical issues?

ed

* Or not.  I think C++ lambdas are implemented as a little class of some 
type which might make C mad.

** I was noticing that C++ lambdas and Obj-C message passing syntax 
collides a little.