[Geany-Devel] Let's move to C++98 - Re: Lets move to C99

[Nick Treleaven]

On 29/08/2013 13:52, Lex Trotman wrote:
>>   I would even go so far as to say it's silly to not use C++11 since it's
>>> such a major improvement over previous C++ versions, in both performance
>>>
>>
>> I'm curious, why does it perform better?
>
>
> I'm putting words in Matthews mouth here, but things like move semantics
> can reduce the need for allocations and copying, but like all such
> "performance improvements" it needs to be used a zillion times before it
> matters, and well, Geany does few things a zillion times (except inside
> Scintilla's rendering code).

OK.

>> Readability is definitely better in C++11 when avoiding iterators and
>> using lambdas, but I was kind of hoping we could avoid those ugly cases. I
>> wasn't thinking of using the STL heavily, just a few containers like
>> string, and perhaps others for any specialized use cases.
>>
>
> Sadly, containers means iterators, inevitably, and yes C++03 syntax is
> ugly, but you get used to it, and just type it automatically. Pity "auto"
> and "for( a: container )" is C++11, oh well.

Yes. Unless we use a foreach macro ;-P
I'm not sure iterators are needed often for string though, but it's been 
a while since I looked at code using it.

> I proposed banning OOP, operator overloading and exceptions in src to make
>> it (much?) easier to understand & maintain the code vs idiomatic C++, with
>> all its unintuitive bug-prone corner cases (which are still in C++11), see
>> my reply to Lex for more info.
>>
>>
> Looking at it again, I'm not sure we mean the same thing by OOP, its a much
> abused and overloaded term, could you perhaps explain your meaning?
>   Depending on what you mean, banning it is either sensible, or the silliest
> idea ever :)

I mean inheritance and virtual functions. I don't think they would pull 
their weight in src, unless we were going to use gtkmm for custom widgets.

>> Yes, or maybe convert a core plugin that uses strings a lot, so we get the
>> benefit of RAII. I might look into it unless Colomban is against that (even
>> for a core plugin).
>
>
> Good idea, plugins can be written in C++ now, without any changes to Geany
> being needed.  Just make sure you don't leak exceptions (unless you mean
> to) since they currently mean terminate().

OK.

Regards,
Nick