From -7791191993192617535 X-Google-Thread: f78e5,e8e0ab29e8861265 X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!newshosting.com!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!peer-uk.news.demon.net!kibo.news.demon.net!mutlu.news.demon.net!news.demon.co.uk!demon!stump.algebra.com!devnull From: caj@cs.york.ac.uk (chris jefferson) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: If C++ had interfaces, what would they be? Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:15:21 GMT Organization: The University of York, UK Lines: 56 Sender: mail2news@demon.net Approved: fjh@cs.mu.oz.au (Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++) Message-ID: <42E60A63.9050409@cs.york.ac.uk> References: <1121963458.661748.118300@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <1122299887.515239.317170@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1122336456.595882.282330@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.news.demon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 1122394530 9070 158.152.254.254 (26 Jul 2005 16:15:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:15:30 +0000 (UTC) X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) X-User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Macintosh/20050716) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU X-Path: comp-std-cpp-robomod!not-for-mail X-Received: (from fjh@localhost) by mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.9/Submit) id j6QGFLxK007905; Wed, 27 Jul 2005 02:15:21 +1000 (EST) X-NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Jul 2005 10:03:16 GMT X-Delivered-To: std-c++@ucar.edu X-Spamscanner: mailbox4.ucsd.edu (v1.6 Apr 6 2005 07:48:50, 0.0/5.0 3.0.0) X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f X-York-MailScanner-From: news@york.ac.uk X-Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ X-MailScanner: PASSED (v1.2.8 47261 j6QA3IjX052957 mailbox4.ucsd.edu) X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.std.c++:1498 Bob Bell wrote: > "Steven T. Hatton" wrote: > >>kanze@gabi-soft.fr wrote: >> >> >>>"Steven T. Hatton" wrote: >>> >>>>People can argue that there are mechanisms for locating such >>>>definitions without a great deal of effort. It may only take >>>>a minute. Do that 60 times, and it takes an hour. The >>>>arrangement of different code bases makes this more difficult >>>>than it would be if there were a formal mechanism for >>>>organizing resources(as in Java). >>> >>>I don't know. I've found it just as difficult to locate >>>definitions in Java as in C++. More difficult, in fact, because >>>the definitions are always embedded in a mess of implementation >>>details. >> >>With the exception of interfaces and abstract classes, Java doesn't have any >>distinction between "declaration" and "definition" (that I can thing of.) >>Of course these features are used extensively. Nonetheless, because the >>Java source code is more coherently organized by specification (or at least >>recommendation and convention), and also because Java specifies a great >>many infrastructure mechanism to facilitate locating resources, the Java >>resource base can be searched much more effectively and deterministically >>than can a C++ code base. > > > As far as I can tell, this simply isn't true; at least, searching for > definitions in a C++ code base does not have to be inefficient or > non-deterministic. Modern IDEs accomplish this quite handily; the > Metrowerks IDE can quickly take me to the definitions of macros, > functions, classes, typedefs, etc. > I would be very interested to know what would happen if you tried to feed Metrowerks some evil C++, like say Boost's metatemplate programming library :) Also, while it's easy to find the "base definition" of a template, I can imagine it would be hard if not impossible for an IDE to show you the "correct" template overload for a particular situation. I'm not saying C++ shouldn't support these things, but it makes it very hard to write anything in an IDE which doesn't have to use heuristics to some degree. Chris --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles, try just posting with ] [ your news-reader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu ] [ --- Please see the FAQ before posting. --- ] [ FAQ: http://www.jamesd.demon.co.uk/csc/faq.html ]