[TriLUG] RE: dev resurgence -- my two cents/rant

Thu Feb 19 02:04:59 EST 2004

> >
> > Any C coders out there?  Have you heard that the standards bodies
> > are doing away with .h extensions for #include files. stdlib.h becomes
> > cstdlib.  Yeah. Like I'm going to remember that.  Like anyone is going
> > to go  through the entire body of open source and closed source code
> > to make such changes.  Compiles will be _filled_ with warnings on
> > deprecated use of .h files. Hah!  It'll never happen, says I.
>
> This has been the case for C++ for a while.  Is C finally catching
> up?  Personally I think it's bogus.  How else will the editor know
> you're editing a header file without you putting stuff in like emacs':
>
> // -*- c-mode -*-
>
> at the beginning or end of every file.
>

Doesn't that suck?  Yeah, I'm a C coder.  C++ as well, and I've been irked
for a long time by the deprecating the .h off of header files.  Yeah,
*h*eader files!  I thought that's why extensions were devised in the first
place.  Granted they have lost (and should lose) some meaning over time, but
I personally believe standardizing them into oblivion is rediculous.
They're there so I can see at a glance what sort of data a particular file
represents without having to touch said data.  In addition, they help my
syntax-aware editors know what syntax mode to use without the need for
rediculous meta-data inserted in comments.  Meta-data is ugly, and makes the
code more difficult to read (imho, of course).

I can see why it's useful to move to a meta-data standard in something like
HTML where there is a variety of ways the data can be encoded, and a variety
of standards to which it can adhere (although I do personally long for the
days where the first line of well-formed HTML was <HTML> and not <! DOCTYPE
blah blah blah>)..  But C?  C is C is C (unless I'm mistaken)..  There's no
French C or Russian C or Cyrillic C.  It's just C.  Function definitions go
in C files.  Declarations and macros go in header files (with room for a
little organizational license of course).  All that stripping the extensions
will do is cause more confusion!

Yeah, that's my rant.  Please accept my apologies for the time wasted in
reading it. (-:  Just wanted to add my "amen!"

Cheers,
~Brian