November 2003 - Posts

• C++/CLI keywords: Under the hood

  C++/CLI specifies several keywords as extensions to ISO C++. The way they are handled falls into five major categories, where only the first impacts the meaning of existing ISO C++ programs. 1. Outright reserved words As of this writing (November 22, Read More... Posted Sunday, November 23, 2003 2:02 AM by hsutter | 3 Comments

• Why "gcnew T" instead of "new (gc) T"?

  On comp.lang.c++.moderated , Peter Lundblad wrote: I also don't see the need for gcnew. Why not use placement new, i.e.: T^ h = new (CLI::gc) T(14); This would require an extension allows placement new overloads to return something other than void* and Read More... Posted Saturday, November 22, 2003 8:47 PM by hsutter | 2 Comments

• C++/CLI candidate base document now available

  Today the C++/CLI candidate base document was posted, and it's freely available for download . This is the spec that Microsoft is contributing to the newly-formed ECMA TC39/TG5 standards committee for consideration for the C++/CLI standards process. It Read More... Posted Friday, November 21, 2003 8:04 PM by hsutter | 4 Comments

• Why R^ instead of cli::handle?

  Nicola Musatti asked the following excellent question: The hat symbol and gcnew could be replaced with a template like syntax, e.g. cli::handle<R> r = cli::gcnew<R>(); I agree that those are alternatives. Everyone, including me, first pushes Read More... Posted Friday, November 21, 2003 4:09 PM by hsutter | 4 Comments

• Why "ref class X", not just "class X : System::Object"?

  On comp.lang.c++.moderated , Andrew Browne wrote: The goals of the C++/CLI proposal are good ones, I think, but I wonder if it would be possible to achieve them without (most of) the new keywords and semantics? For example instead of: ref class R {/*...*/};        Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 18, 2003 4:20 PM by hsutter | 2 Comments

• Q: Why keywords instead of __keywords? A: We already tried __keywords; they failed.

  Last week on comp.lang.c++.moderated , Nicola Musatti wondered why C++/CLI would use keywords that don't follow the __keyword naming convention for conforming extensions: The standard already provides a way to avoid conflicts when introducing new keywords: Read More... Posted Monday, November 17, 2003 6:24 PM by hsutter | 9 Comments

• Q: Aren't C++ pointers alone enough to "handle" GC? A: No.

  A few days ago on news:comp.lang.c++.moderated , Nicola Musatti wrote: As for GC, pure implementations exist. [that add no new extensions to ISO C++] Not for a pure definition of "pure," they don't. :-) To explain why C++ pointers are insufficient (unless Read More... Posted Monday, November 17, 2003 1:29 PM by hsutter | 5 Comments

• Q: Could the CLI binding become required? A: No.

  A few days ago on news:comp.lang.c++.moderated , "Chris" asked: Here is a paranoid question: Is there a possible future step, where compiling C++ on a Microsoft plaftform becomes impossible _without_ using the CLI binding? No. Doing that would mean throwing Read More... Posted Monday, November 17, 2003 12:31 PM by hsutter | 0 Comments

• Help | About

  Welcome! My primary day job these days is that I'm an Architect on the Visual C++ team at Microsoft, currently responsible for leading the redesign of the C++ Managed Extensions for .NET (aka "Managed C++"). I also do a fair amount Read More... Posted Monday, November 17, 2003 8:54 AM by hsutter | 3 Comments