[GRASS5] Want GNU libavl ?

[Glynn Clements]

Eric G. Miller wrote:

> > I know that we have this long-standing policy of preferring ANSI C as 
> > the central language for GRASS. But the truth is that few people _if 
> > any_ today in engineering, research, academia use C as the development 
> > language. It is almost universally C++ that is used. I think that we 
> > have to accept that now and move on. We don't need to necessarily code 
> > the core of GRASS in C++, but we should be able to wrap in external data 
> > structures if these are only available (or the best implementations are 
> > available ) in C++. Also reflect : Mitab, Dime ... the list goes on.
> 
> I think it's mostly a matter of pragmatism.  ANSI/ISO C89 works well pretty
> much everywhere.  Also, GRASS has a lot of code.  Do you want to rewrite
> it all?  One problem with C++, it's a one-way street.  Sure, you can write
> C that is C++ friendly, but the reverse is difficult.  That a lot of other
> folks are primarily using C++ for relatively new projects doesn't have
> a lot of bearing, when you consider maintaining/enhancing an existing
> code base written in C.

As well as agreeing with what Eric said, I'd also like to point out
that binaries generated from C tend to be significantly more portable
than those generated from C++. If a binary requires libstdc++, it
typically requires *exactly the same version* of libstdc++ that was
used to build it. And if you want to use a library which is written in
C++, you typically have to use more-or-less the same version of the
compiler that was used to build the library.

> Well, if I had a choice between C++ and Ada95, I'd probably choose the
> latter.  C++ keeps all the dangerous stuff of C and adds new ways to
> shoot yourself in the foot.

Oh yes.

> (and can we please change G_malloc and G_realloc not
> to cast to a char * !!  What a pain that is.).  

Consider it done.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>