Re: PATCH to remove signature support

[Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.COM>]

> The question is: Does anybody actually *use* signatures, in a real
> application (rather then just a demonstration what they are good for).

I suspect that many people are in a position like mine, and must write
code that is accepted by more than one compiler (possibly with #ifdefs).
This pretty much rules out use of non-standard features.

> > I can understand that not many people uses signatures since it is
> > gcc extension, but is there nothing in upcoming C++ standards that
> > sort of resembles interfaces or signatures?

The standard is out and frozen.  Eventually there will be a new revision,
but all that the committee is doing now is wrapping up loose ends (issuing
"defect reports", which are minor corrections to errors in the standard).

In any case, a Java interface is simply a restricted form of multiple
inheritance: it is a lot like C++ virtual base classes but the restriction
that interfaces have no data members gets rid of the ugliness with
constructors that C++ users run into when they use virtual bases.