[boost] Re: Including abs() in rational.hpp

From: Moore, Paul (Paul.Moore_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-12-13 05:40:00

From: Beman Dawes [mailto:beman_at_[hidden]]
> >Frankly, I think the <c*> headers were a mistake. People are going
> >to have to use the <*.h> headers anyway for the foreseeable future.
> >so why bother with the <c*> ones? I hope (I couldn't find any mention
> >of this point in the standard) that we at least have a guarantee that
> >including <foo.h> and <cfoo> in the same module is always harmless;
> >otherwise, a lot of libraries, including Boost, are going to be useless.
> 
> While it would always be nice to find workarounds for common
> problems, the bottom line for Boost is to try to make the C++
> standard work.  Everyone of us probably thinks that there is some
> part of the standard which was a mistake, but we still try to work
> with it.

I agree that making the standard work is important. But the point about
<foo.c> vs <cfoo> is important. Is it guaranteed OK to include both? (The
C++ standard includes the C standard by reference, so both are considered
defined). The "better C" approach to C++ is going to hit this issue a lot,
as is the inclusion of C headers in vendor headers. I believe that including
both has to work correctly. However, I'm not at all sure of the name-lookup
issues and their implications.

<crusade>
Also, there has to be some compromise. People don't use MSVC because they
like it :-( I bought MSVC because I needed to work on Python, Vim, Perl,
XEmacs, and other open-source software. In practice, there is no other
Windows compiler which is likely to build all of the above. You don't have
to like the fact (I don't) but it's true. As a personal user, I can't afford
to buy 2 commercial compilers (I know there's mingw, but I haven't yet got
it to work 100%, and AFAIK, I can't write COM/OLE code in it to the level I
need to...) Making as much standard C++ work with MSVC as possible gets MSVC
users thinking that using the standard stuff is "worth it". God knows we
have to wean people off MFC. The more MSVC users actually *use* the
important bits of the standard, the more pressure there will be on MS to
conform, rather than just adding yet more non-standard extensions. We need
people saying "I wish it worked better with VC", rather than "It doesn't
work, let's go back to the MS version".

I dislike MSVC as much as the next person, but I need to live with it. I'd
rather live with using it as much like a "real" C++ compiler as I can.
</crusade>

*blush*
Sorry,
Paul.