Re: bison'd files don't compile under Microsoft VC++

[Florian Krohm]

On Thursday 14 February 2002 06:35, Akim Demaille wrote:
> >>>>> "Hans" == Hans Aberg <address@hidden> writes:
> >>
> >> I am curious as to why you "don't want to walk that tracks"...
>
> Hans> Which I figure is one reason that Akim, and for that matter
> Hans> no-one else wants to spend too much effort on a compile C as C++
> Hans> parser.
>
> No, no and no.  The fact is that that guy, so-called Akim, works on
> Autoconf, just as Paul does.  And we do have a fair bit of knowledge
> on how portability can be reached.  That way (#ifdef MY_SYSTEM), is
> not the right one.  We've been too greedy, willing the best for both
> worlds (C and C++).
>
> It doesn't work.
>
> So we keep targeting at C, and people who want to do C++ will know
> what they have today.  We thought we could prepare the work for them.
> That's wrong, we cannot.  It is intrinsically wrong to try to do nice
> C++ with namespace and so forth, while on the other hand producing a
> function, not an object.

I agree with Akim and Paul, that this was an experiment that failed
and the patches should be reverted. The real problem here is
that one tries to compile C as C++. That is a not such a great idea
because the languages have different semantics in fundamental concepts 
such as assignments. 
The fact that Bison parsers used to work with C++ in the past is
more by accident than by design. Proper behavior in C++ context was
never guaranteed nor targeted. IMHO it is unreasonable to ask the Bison
developers to fix something that is not really their problem.

Florian