Re: Standard header format.

[Dhruv Matani <dhruvbird at gmx dot net>]

Hi,
	Well there's not much I can say, but just that the standard does not
even require the standard headers to be files or any such remotely
*parsable* (one that can be parsed by a parser) entity. For all you
know, it can be compiled files, and the compiler may take care of the
the instantiation using some complex machinery.
	Or the standard headers may even be code compiled directly into the
compiler proper, and the #include is just a hint to the compiler, and
maybe the preprocessor has nothing to do with
#include<some_standard_header_name>. I'm not 100% sure about the
technical correctness of the above statement, but it seems quite
possible from my reading of the standard. There is nothing that says
that #include<> directives may be ignored by the pre-processor, and that
the compiler can interpret them as long as the user gets a runnable
binary/object file.

-Dhruv.


On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 05:55, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
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> On Tuesday 08 June 2004 14:33, Matt Austern wrote:
> > On Jun 8, 2004, at 10:58 AM, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
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> > > Yes.  You do not understand what has actually been written.
> > > Furthermore, I
> > > presented supporting evidence for my position which included the API
> > > documentation and header files from some of the largest C++ projects
> > > in the
> > > world, and showed the clear correspondence between the header file and
> > > API
> > > documentation.  You failed to address that in the least.
> >
> > Unfortunately, I believe that this discussion is at a dead and and that
> > it no
> > longer serves any useful purpose.
> >
> > The people who actually implement libstdc++ have explained their reasons
> > for using implementation techniques that makes the libstdc++ headers
> > less
> > transparent to novices and that make it look less immediately like the
> > set of
> > declarations in the standard.  Whether or not you think those reasons
> > are
> > valid, the people who do the work think so.
> 
> If anything, this part of the discussion has moved off topic here.  There are 
> two closely related issues.  Standard Headers and header files. libstdc++ 
> implements the Standard Headers. These headers have their origin in the 
> concept of header files from C, but are not required to be implemented as 
> header files, per se.  Everything I wrote in the above quoted message was 
> addressing the use of header files in C++ applications, and not Standard 
> Headers.
> 
> > If you'd like, you can consider this to be a sign of our incompetence:
> > we
> > aren't smart enough to see how to achieve all of the other design goals
> > while also writing a library in a form that's suitable as a pedagogical
> > introduction.  The important thing for you to realize: that isn't going
> > to
> > change just by your telling us that having a library like that would be
> > nice.
> 
> You've completely missed the point. If you want to understand what I was 
> actually getting at, read my previous posts.
> 
> - -- 
> Regards,
> Steven
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-- 
        -Dhruv Matani.
http://www.geocities.com/dhruvbird/

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