Popularity Of C among developer

CPallini

I do like 'C' because my name is Carlo. Richard, for instance, likes more 'R'.

Maciej Los

And i really do like 'M'... :laugh:

Lost User

:-O

Daniel Pfeffer

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

Wine, women and song.

<looks around> Where?

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.

Victor Nijegorodov

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

Wine, women and song.

:-D :thumbsup:

CPallini

Of course. :thumbsup:

Abhays01

C is highly portable and simple language. But, because of some limitation of C, it is loosing fame. The main reason behind is, it doesn't support object-oriented programming features. Means- Inheritance Encapsulation Polymorphism etc. are not suported by C programming language, that's why C++ is developed. Even C doesn't perform run time type checking.

David Crow

Abhays01 wrote:

The main reason behind is, it doesn't support object-oriented programming features … Inheritance Encapsulation

Inheritance (structs inheriting from other structs), and encapsulation (struct name in the H file, and struct implementation in the C file) are certainly possible with C.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

Lost User

David Crow wrote:

struct name in the H file, and struct implementation in the C file

That's not encapsulation, in any sense.

Dar Brett 0

Wikipedia:

In object oriented programming languages, encapsulation is used to refer to one of two related but distinct notions, and sometimes to the combination thereof: - A language mechanism for restricting direct access to some of the object's components. - A language construct that facilitates the bundling of data with the methods (or other functions) operating on that data.

Opaque structs in C fit at least one of those definitions for abstraction. You could probably make the case that since you'd need to bundle the opaque struct with some subroutines to manipulate it that you're basically writing methods - the only difference is the class keyword and the lack of an implicit *this* pointer.

David Crow

How about something like: car.h

struct car;

car.c

struct car
{
private:
char make[10];
char model[10];
int year;

public:
char *getMake();
char *getModel();
char *getYear();
};

Direct access to the object's components has been restricted.
The data and the methods that operate on that data are bundled together.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

Lost User

The keywords private and public do not exist in the C language.

Lost User

But you cannot do any form of abstraction or encapsulation in C. There is no mechanism for hiding members of a struct.

David Crow

Indeed (too many years away from it), but that does not change my point. If you had something like this in the H file:

struct CarPrivate;

struct Car
{
struct CarPrivate* priv;
};

extern char* GetYear(struct Car* car);

And had something like this in the C file:

struct CarPrivate
{
int year;
};

int GetYear(struct Car* car)
{
return car->priv->year;
}

You would not be able to access members of CarPrivate like:

void main( void )
{
struct Car* car = some_method_to_create_car();
int year = car->priv->year; // error
}

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

Lost User

Putting the definition in a header file only matters if you are trying to access the struct in separate source modules; and that has nothing to do with encapsulation. And yes, of course you could do what you suggest above, but it serves little purpose since you can still access the data directly, and thus break the pseudo encapsulation. In OOP languages the data can actually be hidden from the users of the class, in C it cannot.

David Crow

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

...since you can still access the data directly...

What if the structs were compiled into a LIB file? The user of that LIB file only has access to what is in the corresponding H file, correct?

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

Lost User

How would that work? If you have the definitions in a header that you include in your source, then you have access to all members of the struct. Whether the actual struct is allocated on the stack, the heap or via a pointer to an external piece of memory, you can still see all the members.

David Crow

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

If you have the definitions in a header...

The declaration would be in the H file. The implementation/definition would be in the C file, which would get compiled into a LIB file. Thus the only thing accessible to those using the LIB file would be the declarations in the corresponding H file (which does not include anything private).

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

Lost User

At the risk of repeating myself, that is not going to work. If you are going to do all the data manipulation in the lib file and not provide the struct definition to the user, then there is nothing required in the H file at all. But that means the user cannot allocate any space for the data in the first place.

David Crow

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

At the risk of repeating myself, that is not going to work.

Please repeat, because I really want to know what I'm doing wrong.

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

...and not provide the struct definition to the user...

In the sample code that I showed, the user would have access to the definition of the Car struct (which could obviously contain more public members), and to the declaration of the CarPrivate struct. CarPrivate would be fully implemented/defined in the LIB file.

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

But that means the user cannot allocate any space for the data in the first place.

Are you referring to the user doing something like:

struct Car* car = some_method_to_create_car();

Similar to the GetYear() function shown earlier, the some_method_to_create_car() function (that I didn't bother implementing) would have access to the CarPrivate members.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles