jts@demon.siemens-rtl (Jim Sasaki) (02/20/88)
Hi. I'm on a project that is on the brink of entering the implementation
phase; we're trying to decide between implementing it in c or c++. (The
project is to develop an interpreter for a procedural language to be used in
manufacturing.) None of us has any experience with c++ (or with any OO
language). We were hoping that people on the net with more experience could
answer some questions for us.
First, how buggy is c++? We've played around a bit with an AT&T Unix Sys V
(release 1) compiler. It's a little disturbing that a declaration like
double f(int (*x)[3]);
causes a syntax error. It's not a disaster, since we can use
typedef int *intptr;
double f(intptr x[3]);
but it seemed like a bad sign. Is c++ on Suns better? Worse?
Second, how portable is c++? We are going to develop on Suns and then
recompile under VMS. Is this a reasonable thing to try?
Third, how much c/c++/dbx expertise would we need before we would be able to
debug our programs? I've looked at some cfront output, and the idea of having
to use it together with dbx is not pleasant. (Maybe we should just make sure
not to put any bugs in our program. :-)
We'd appreciate any information that people would like to share with us.
-- Jim Sasaki (jts%siemens.com@princeton.edu, princeton!siemens!jts)