Re: [Caml-list] More OCaml+windowing system questions

["Warp" <warplayer@free.fr>]

> > However, C and C++ are extremely portable, which is very
> > appealing to me.
>
> Sorry, I cannot resist commenting on that particular statement, because
> it still seems to be such a frighteningly common misconception.

And so can't I resist to comment your comment :)

> This statement confuses two issues: portability and availability. C
> certainly is available on pretty much every system. But this says
> nothing about portability of C code - C and C++ are definitely among the
> least portable languages in use today. There effectively is no
> non-trivial C program that is portable according to the language
> standard (ie. does not explore undefined/unspecified behaviour one way
> or the other - most times you are not even aware).

I think that all the features of the C/C++ languages ARE portable. Why
shouldn't they be ? All you have to do is to compile with the good compiler
( gcc for instance ). BUT then, you have to be aware of some things that are
not permitted ( like DWORD access on odd memory addresses on Solaris ) and
to use a portable API - like ACE, or OpenGL - to do "special" things. In
fact, the limits of portability C/C++ are in the choice of the API you make,
and in the fact you CAN write very-low-level code when you should use an
API.

Thus, there is a big difference between portabily ( source code can be
recompiled on another machine and will work fine ) and "super-portability"
 compiled code will work fine - if you got the 'launcher' ) : and that's one
of the reasons of Java's sucess

Warp

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