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Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

dlang.org

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Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#2

Post by dgellow »

For more context and details, Walter Bright wrote a series of blog article between 2017 and 2018 on the subject (though their content is a bit outdated as more D features are now supported in BetterC mode):

- "D as a Better C" (2017): https://dlang.org/blog/2017/08/23/d-as-a-better-c/

- "Vanquish Forever These Bugs That Blasted Your Kingdom" (2018): https://dlang.org/blog/2018/02/07/vanquish-forever-these-bug...

- "DasBetterC: Converting make.c to D" (2018): https://dlang.org/blog/2018/06/11/dasbetterc-converting-make...

Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#3

Post by F-0X »

One thing that really annoyed me about D is that its documentation lists basically every function with an 'auto' return type. Auto should be completely banned from documentation, it's a complete hindrance. It's the single biggest contributor to why I stopped using D for personal projects - I was so tired of having to hunt down what functions are going to return, sometimes having to resort to just using it and looking at what the compiler complains about.

And that's a huge shame. Because in general I really liked using D.

Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#5

Post by WalterBright »

F-0X wrote: post #3

One thing that really annoyed me about D is that its documentation lists basically every function with an 'auto' return type. Auto should be completely banned from documentation, it's a complete hindrance. It's the single biggest contributor to why I stopped using D for personal projects - I was so tired of having to hunt down what functions are going to return, sometimes having to resort to just using it and looking…

You don't have to wait for the compiler to complain. Using:

    pragma(msg, T);
where T is any type will print the type to the screen during compilation. pragma(msg) will print all kinds of things, making it a very handy tool to visualize what is happening while compiling. I use it all the time.

Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#7

Post by WalterBright »

perfunctory wrote: post #6
WalterBright wrote: post #4

Walter here - AMA!

Would it make sense to spin "Better C" off into a separate language? It would for example help to create an ecosystem of 3rd party libraries not dependent on gc.

You can certainly treat it that way. It specifically does not need its own libraries, all it needs are the usual C libraries. Libraries created with it are also directly accessible from C.

Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#9

Post by ahartmetz »

F-0X wrote: post #3

One thing that really annoyed me about D is that its documentation lists basically every function with an 'auto' return type. Auto should be completely banned from documentation, it's a complete hindrance. It's the single biggest contributor to why I stopped using D for personal projects - I was so tired of having to hunt down what functions are going to return, sometimes having to resort to just using it and looking…

Ugh, that is even more ill-advised than using auto without good reason in C++.

Re: Better C – A subset of D Programming Language

#10

Post by yvdriess »

perfunctory wrote: post #6
WalterBright wrote: post #4

Walter here - AMA!

Would it make sense to spin "Better C" off into a separate language? It would for example help to create an ecosystem of 3rd party libraries not dependent on gc.

Seconding the question. More to the point, a language that only needs libc and not a separate runtime.

It's a big boon that existing C projects can migrate one object file at a time to betterC, without needing to pull in extra dependencies. Moreover, embedded dev is where C is still the most entrenched due to its runtime simplicity (simple ctr0, linker script, and you're off).

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