[prog] Passing data between modules

[Jimen Ching]

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Dan Richter wrote:
>There are also more practical reasons. In C you can't return a struct from
>a function, and you have to remember to initialize all your data
>structures. You can get around all the limitations of C (e.g., return a

Yes, one of the major advantages of C++ over C is that the object
methodology makes things easier.  C++ can be used as a higher level
langauge than C, but you pay a price for this in performance.
Initialization of data structures are not _always_ required.  One can
optimize that out and initialize the data structure with _real_ data.
With C++, the constructor _usually_ initializes the member variables with
_default_ data, only to be over-written with _real_ data later on.  Of
course, the occurance of these _default_ initialization can be reduced,
but they can't be eliminated 100% of the time.

It seems Conor's application is very performance sensitive.  So the
question of going with C++ needs careful consideration.

Note: Conor, I'm sure you'll be able to find both C and C++ compilers for
most Unix-like OS's into the far future.  So I don't think you need to
worry about language longevity when it comes to C and C++.  Of course, if
you have the source code to the compiler, you don't need to worry about it
disappearing.  Another advantage of Free Software.  ;-)

--jc
--
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)          jching at flex.com        wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org