Obscure C++ Features

I was going to say the same thing. I guess I've been doing C++ for too long to consider these obscure. Any nontrivial C++ codebase is likely to have several of these.

Re: Obscure C++ Features

#8

Post by olliej » Fri, Apr 19, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

The behavior of [] is from C -- it's not a bizarro C++ feature.

The "redefining keywords" is the pre-processor. That's what it does. There isn't anything magic here. Strictly speaking it can be run entirely ahead of the C/C++ compiler, on any file you want. There's no requirement that it is C/C++ - you could use it on a python script (as long as you weren't using # comments anywhere :D )

Re: Obscure C++ Features

#9

Post by dljsjr » Fri, Apr 19, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

olliej wrote: post #8

The behavior of [] is from C -- it's not a bizarro C++ feature. The "redefining keywords" is the pre-processor. That's what it does. There isn't anything magic here. Strictly speaking it can be run entirely ahead of the C/C++ compiler, on any file you want. There's no requirement that it is C/C++ - you could use it on a python script (as long as you weren't using # comments anywhere :D )

Definitions of obscure:

1. Not easily distinguished

2. Not readily understandable/expressable

3. Not commonly known

I didn't see the author use the word "bizarro" anywhere, nor make any claims about any of this stuff being weird. He actually presented almost everything in a fairly neutral tone, except when he said that using the preprocessor to override keywords was dangerous (which could be construed as opinion).

Re: Obscure C++ Features

#10

Post by hamidr » Fri, Apr 19, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

Obscure? You may think so but sometimes these things buy you lots of time.