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Subject: Re: Any reason to use C?

Author: Omid David Tabibi

Date: 23:58:51 07/28/03

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On July 29, 2003 at 01:54:29, Gerd Isenberg wrote:

>On July 28, 2003 at 19:00:41, Dieter Buerssner wrote:
>
>>On July 28, 2003 at 18:26:29, Gerd Isenberg wrote:
>>
>>>References, function inlining and namespaces are enaugh to use C++.
>>
>>Gerd, references is enough for me, to avoid C++. In the "old days", when I read
>>code with a function call, like foo(a), I was sure, that a will be the same
>>after the function call, than before. With C++, I cannot be sure anymore. If I
>>want to make a changable by a function call, I use &a in C. All pretty much self
>>documenting. Not anymore in C++.
>
>Hi Dieter,
>
>i see your point - i have no problems with references, may be due to Java.
>References are very intuitive for me, but i don't use them "randomly" in
>functions.
>Most often the "output" paramter by reference is the first (left) one - and i
>use appropriate function identifiers, implying the desired side effect.
>
>  int bitScanAndReset(BitBoard &bb);
>  void assignWithMask(int &target, int source, int mask);
>
>
>>
>>It may even be a performance issue. I read your suggestion about the small
>>inline functions vs. macros. I basically agree. But when using reference
>>paramaters (your example did), things might be very different. This might make
>>it very difficult or even impossible to make a good optimization for the
>>compiler.
>
>I never found a problem so far. I guess from compilers point of view, there is
>no pragmatical difference between a pointer and a reference.

I think there is no difference at all between the way pointer and reference
work. I compared the assembly generated for a number of functions in both by
reference and by pointer versions, there was no difference at all, both in Debug
mode and Release mode.


>
>Regards,
>Gerd
>
>>
>>Function inlining is part of the ISO C Standard of 1999. Not all compilers
>>support it.
>>
>>Regards,
>>Dieter



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