Re: I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable (union members and ctors)

[rridge at csclub dot uwaterloo dot ca (Ross Ridge)]

Ross Ridge wrote:
>I completely disagree.  Standards should primarily standardize existing
>practice, not inventing new features.  New features should be created
>by people who actually want and will use the features, not by some
>disinterested committee.

Robert Dewar write:
>First of all, I think you mean uninterested and not disinterested,
>indeed the ideal is that all committee members *should* be disinterested,
>though this is not always the case.

Since it's essentially impossible to be impartial about a feature you
created, both senses of the word apply here.

>The history for C here does not apply to C++ in my opinion. Adding new
>features to a language like C++ is at this stage highly non-trivial in
>terms of getting a correct 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++.
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.

					Ross Ridge