[Geany-Devel] Lets move to C99

[Matthew Brush]

On 13-08-16 04:38 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
> On 16/08/2013 07:36, Lex Trotman wrote:
>> The more we can allow modern(ish :) programming styles using a well known
>> standard the simpler it is to produce correct code (eg inlines not
>> macros,
>> who will remember that EMPTY may compute its arguments multiple times).
>
> That's why it's in capitals, so it's clear it's a macro. An inline would
> be better, good idea. Though for FALLBACK we don't know the return type.
>

Templates! Oh wait, C, right :)

>> At the moment C11 is too new (not enough complete support) but C99 is
>> fine.
>>
>> Unless we follow the example of gcc itself and upgrade to C++ :)
>
> Not sure that's a good idea for Geany now, although I'm glad that gcc
> did it. They use a restricted subset IIRC. I miss templates and RAII in
> C though.
>

+1. While I'm also not sure it's a good idea in Geany and certainly 
won't be pressing for it anytime soon, 90% of C++'s crumminess is due to 
backwards compatibility with C, so I think it should be (theoretically, 
not socially) possible to gradually transition from one to the other in 
a project like Geany without too much pain.

Fun (but useless) fact: over 50% of Geany's codebase is already C++[1]

</offtopic>

Cheers,
Matthew Brush

[1] Based on count of *.cxx vs *.c files in codebase, and obviously 
including Scintilla, which isn't really part of our program, hence the 
"(but useless)".