From:	dontmailme AT iname DOT com (Steamer)
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: Help!
Date:	Fri, 20 Oct 2000 21:27:24 GMT
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Johan Henriksson wrote:

> >> It's quite unavoidable to learn C if you learn CC...
> >Why go to all the trouble of learning C++ if all you want to learn
> >is C?
> * You can read ~100% more sources to others apps

True, but by that logic you should also learn Java, Perl, etc.,
while you're at it, then you could read even more sources.

> * You get a better understanding of programming and OO

I don't think C++ is very good for learning object-oriented
programming.  Java is surely better.  Smalltalk may be even
better, but it isn't very popular.

> >How are you going to know which parts of C++ are also C?
> You get a parse error :)

True...

> Seriously, I think books should be
> more careful about how they write. CC is an "addon" and
> should be threat like one.

I think it is better to consider C++ as a separate language.
A typical C++ program doesn't look much like C at all, with
all that object-oriented stuff, exception handling, new/delete
instead of malloc/free, cout instead of printf, etc.
 
> >And how are you going to find out about all those little things
> >which are different in C?
> Is anything different? None of my older books tells anything about that.

What is the type of 'a'?  (C answer: int.  C++ answer: char.)

A C++ compiler will choke on

    char *ptr = malloc(9);

although this is fine in C.

There are other differences, but I can't remember them all at the
moment.  Somewhere there is a web page listing differences, but
I've lost the URL.

Here's a silly program that prints out the name of the language it
was compiled as - I'll let you work out why:

#include <stdio.h>

typedef int foo;
 
int
main()
{
    struct foo {
        int x[2];
    };
    char *arr[] = { "++", "" };
    
    printf("C%s\n", arr[sizeof(foo)==sizeof(int)]);
    return 0;
}

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