[Geany-Devel] RFC: Merge C and C++ Filetypes (no troll)

[Matthew Brush]

On 2016-01-06 12:23 PM, Thomas Martitz wrote:
> Am 06.01.2016 um 21:12 schrieb Jiří Techet:
>>
>>
>>     It's indeed at least interesting to consider, because at least for .h
>>     headers there really is some mixed stuff all over the place -- even,
>>     simply look in Scintilla's source tree.
>>
>>
>> +1 for having the headers parsed/lexed by the C++ parser (with sources
>> it may be a bit dangerous and typically the sources have the right C++
>> extension).
>>
>>
>
> Not replying to Jiří specifically.
>
> -1. .h is legitimately a C, it's just that many people get it wrong. And
> I don't want C++ keywords highlighted in C headers while they are not
> highlighted it C source files. This is just confusing.
>

Why is .h any more C than C++ or Obj-C? Because it came first? I agree 
it's stupid that in the later part of last millennium, they decided on 
the convention to use .h for C++ and Obj-C (and others?) headers since 
it was already a convention in C, but it did become a convention in C++ 
and now it's widely used, for example [0][1][2][3] among many, many others.

What's more, it's especially useful to see C++ keywords highlighted in 
.h header files, since they can be included in C++ as well as C[4][5][6] 
unless their author wants to make them less useful by using said 
keywords in the header. I think the most common case would be someone 
doing it inadvertently (as happened in Geany), which is where having 
them highlighted differently gives a visual queue that something is 
wrong[7].

Cheers,
Matthew Brush

[0]: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtkmm/tree/gtk/gtkmm
[1]: https://github.com/qtproject/qtbase/tree/dev/src/corelib/global
[2]: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/latest-doxygen/files.html
[3]: http://sourceforge.net/p/scintilla/code/ci/default/tree/src/
[4]: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/gtkwidget.h#n38
[5]: https://github.com/spurious/SDL-mirror/blob/master/include/SDL.h#L61
[6]: 
http://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=include/stdlib.h;h=352339e8595eb8229018cb27f7d2decf63f511c7;hb=HEAD#l16
[7]: Or if the author is being evil on purpose, it gives them the smug 
satisfaction that they're making life hard for C++ programmers :)