Robert Dewar writes: > Ross Ridge wrote: > t formal definition. > > > Most of GCC's long list of extensions to C are also implemented as > > extensions to C++, so you've already lost this battle in GNU C++. > > And many of them are ill-defined (and some would agree ill-considered). > Mistakes in the past are not a good reason for mistakes in the future. > > > Trying to add new a new feature without an existing implementation only > > makes it harder to get both a correct formal definition and something > > that people will actually want to use. > > I think the best procedure is to discuss new features from a language > design point of view, and the committee is the best forum for that, > then implement them as *part* of the (typically fairly drawn out) > process of adding a new feature.
There's always a "chicken and egg" problem here: language features that might be good for a standardization proposal need to be tested in real-world applications before anyone knows that they will be useful. Of course, some of gcc's C extensions are ill-considered and caused problems, but one of the reasons we know how ill-considered they are is that they were implemented and people tried to use them. gcc has a role to play as a deployment vehicle for language extensions. The trouble is that it's very hard to kill an extension once people are using it... Andrew.
