On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Frank Loeffler <knarf@cct.lsu.edu> wrote:

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 02:11:22PM +0100, Ian Hinder wrote:
> I see that Piraha is written in C++, so we
> would have to relax the restriction that the flesh can only contain C
> code.

I don't see a reason for this restriction anymore. In fact, using C++
would make some of this code much more readable and maintainable.
Speaking if C++ in the flesh: How strict was this in the past anyway;
looking at src/main/flesh.cc from 1998, written by Tom? Of course, this
is just a minimal C++ program, not using any of the features that past
C++ compilers could have stumbled over.

The main program needs to be written in C++ to allow linking with other C++ code. At that time, the flesh was pure ANSI C.

However, times have changed. Carpet has proved that C++ is possible and efficient on any interesting system. Our current policy is to allow C++ features, in particular if they lead to "better" (simpler) code, and if the code is portable. That means in particular that C++11 features are probably not a good idea, but using e.g. STL containers would be nice. In other cases, preprocessor magic and code duplication may be replaced by templates.

-erik

--
Erik Schnetter <schnetter@cct.lsu.edu>
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/