Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

[James Kanze]

On Jul 21, 9:02 pm, lawrence.jo...@ siemens.com wrote:

Willem <wil...@stack.n lwrote:

In other words: There cannot be any commercial applicaiton
written in C, because in your view it is not well suited to
one or two application types you can think of.

I don't think that's what James meant. I think when he said
"commercial application", he really meant "business data
processing application". C really *isn't* well suited to most
BDP applications, so his statement is much more reasonable
when interpreted that way. But I still suspect that there are
at least a few BDP applications written in C nonetheless.

Exactly. And obviously, you can do it; I know one person who
wrote relational data base code in assembler. But C isn't
really appropriate; there are almost always better alternatives.
C doesn't have any support for decimal arithmetic, nor any means
of adding it comfortably.

But I'd forgotten that today, "commercial " generally means the
opposite of "open source", or "free", and doesn't refer to the
application domain. I should have been clearer.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kan ze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orientée objet/
Beratung in objektorientier ter Datenverarbeitu ng
9 place Sémard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'École, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34

[Ben Pfaff]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

James Kanze <james.kanze@gm ail.comwrites:

C doesn't have any support for decimal arithmetic, nor any means
of adding it comfortably.

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n4060.pdf

--
Ben Pfaff

http://benpfaff.org

[Dann Corbit]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

"Ben Pfaff" <blp@cs.stanfor d.eduwrote in message
news:87prp5x2a2 .fsf@blp.benpfa ff.org...

James Kanze <james.kanze@gm ail.comwrites:
>

>C doesn't have any support for decimal arithmetic, nor any means
>of adding it comfortably.

>
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n4060.pdf

And in case you don't feel like waiting, there is IBM's excellent package:

http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/#decNumber

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

[James Kanze]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On Jul 22, 7:21 pm, Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanfo rd.eduwrote:

James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrites:

C doesn't have any support for decimal arithmetic, nor any means
of adding it comfortably.

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n4060.pdf

Yes, I'd heard about this. But I wasn't too sure of its status,
and it isn't implemented by the compilers I regularly use.

IMHO, it is an important step forward. Both decimal and complex
are really only used by a restricted community; one could argue
on those grounds that they don't belong in the standard of a
general purpose language. On the other hand, those communities
really do need them, and not having them generally means that
the language can't be used for certain applications, at least
not effectively.

C++ sort of side steps the issue; because it has operator
overloading, you can (supposedly) write your own, or use a third
party library. But your own or a third party library is still
not the same thing as "standard"; and in the case of decimal
arithmetic, there are also performance issues to consider: many
machines have direct hardward support for decimal arithmetic,
which a library written in C or C++ won't be able to access.
(Many years back, I was involved in porting some software using
BCD to different architectures. The person who ported it to the
Siemens mainframe rewrote the four BCD arithmetic operators in
assembler: something like 40 lines of assember, with no loops,
to replace 400 lines of C, with several loops, and a speed up of
five magnitude.)

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kan ze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orientée objet/
Beratung in objektorientier ter Datenverarbeitu ng
9 place Sémard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'École, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34