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by CrLf
5950 days ago
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"Gcc isn't interested in them, they are holding off for some future C++ syntax, though I don't see how that helps C programmers." You are assuming that C programmers need to be helped. The beauty of C lies in its simplicity, not in its features. That's what has kept C alive to this day despite its shortcomings, and despite the existence of C++. C does not need new constructs. C needs to be kept as simple and as close as possible to the hardware, it needs to continue to be a high-level assembly. That's what C is mostly used for. If you feel C needs more features, you are probably using the wrong language for the job. |
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First: organization. If I grab a chunk of function and put it in nicely named subfunction, even if it is only called once it lets me keep each function to a nice size. This could be done with a static function, but then you always have to think: "What else in this file might call this function?"
Second: (And much more empowering) Gathering together repetitious code can be cleaner. Consider implementing some network protocol. You will probably have a "get next byte from buffer" function which will need access to the buffer, the current position, the number of valid bytes in the buffer, and who knows what else. You could make this a static function and pass all the arguments in, correctly, each time and if you only need a single value back that works. With a lexically scoped subfunction you can just reference these in the outer scope and if you need to set an error condition or message just set it in the outer. Very clean. No scary runtime code.