Re: generalized lvalues -- patch outline

[Michael Matz <matz@suse.de>]

Hi,

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:

> Michael Matz <matz@suse.de> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> | The only C++ packages in which I see this is alsamixergui, chasen, 
> | knights, libebml and licq, so I personally would be thankful already for 
> | having such extension only in C.
> 
> Such C++ prckages can use reinterpret_cast<>.
> 
> C packages can use dedicated macros, if they really think the need
> that sheating.   

My point in the whole discussion is to avoid having to change 50+
packages.  If I'm (or whoever else is) going to fix them anyway, I can see
multiple ways.  So you suggesting some of those ways misses my point.

> | Practically speaking 4.0 is currently strictly less usefull in some 
> | aspects for the average C programmer.
> 
> Well,  you and I have different notions of "average programmer".

Yes.  Perhaps because I have to deal with many packages built by GCC my 
view of the average programmer is skewed to one side, because it's natural 
that I only see examples of how strange things programmers do.  Nobody 
calls me because his package compiles ;-)

> Probably, this sort of situations probably happen because some people
> have been encouraged in conceiving programming as an activity of
> throwing random codes to the compiler and see what happens.

Possible.  This is one of the ways to learn programming.  And despite what
the language standard says, to my eyes "(T*)p++" looks like a natural way
to write p+=sizeof(T), so I'm somewhat sympathetic to programmers using
this construct.


Ciao,
Michael.