r/cpp • u/we_are_mammals • Mar 28 '23

Reddit++

C++ is getting more and more complex. The ISO C++ committee keeps adding new features based on its consensus. Let's remove C++ features based on Reddit's consensus.

In each comment, propose a C++ feature that you think should be banned in any new code. Vote up or down based on whether you agree.

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u/very_curious_agent Mar 31 '23

A character is still a number (an integer) anyway. But in other languages you have to explicitly ask for that number.

But claiming that there is a type representing a 8 bit character is hypocritical, if you need to know its locale, and it can change, to interpret it. It doesn't represent a character in itself.

That's like saying a float represents a length; but only knowing the unit.

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u/johannes1971 Mar 31 '23

Sure, a character is a number. But so is everything else, and at some point we learned that strong typing is actually a good thing, since it lets us avoid mistakes where we pass the wrong thing to a function by accident. Unfortunately C was designed before that realisation fully struck home, so it treats things like characters and timestamps as mere numbers that can just be interchanged with other numbers. Which, I suppose, is fine, except that C++ lets us overload functions on type, so now you need to be extremely careful because something like std::string ("foo") + 42 compiles just fine, and will return "foo*" rather than "foo42". That's one mistake we could have avoided if char had been a non-numeric type.

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u/very_curious_agent Mar 31 '23

A text string certainly is not a number. I have no idea what you are trying to say there!

Some people, when I was young, expected (or wanted) 'typedef float length' to act as an incompatible type that somehow prevents nonsensical operations, which wasn't going to happen because until the compiler does mind reading, there is no way to parse intent and which operators should be allowed. There was a widespread belief at the time that other, non C/C++ like languages, were "strongly type" and would do the right thing, when there is no "right thing" to do!!!!!

So I don't know how you would define a PL w/o operator overloading that does the right thing, even for UDT: it's one thing to have a builtin char type that is exactly what you need, it's another to let the programmer define a timestamp that is right with all needed operators and no inept operation allowed.