Blocks in C, not C++ [LWN.net]

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 16, 2009 20:45 UTC (Wed) by atai (subscriber, #10977)
In reply to: Blocks in C, not C++ by ncm
Parent article: Tornado and Grand Central Dispatch: a quick look

Is there any plan to implement similar feature (extension) in gcc?

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 16, 2009 20:54 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

It would be what is required if you want GCD support for C++, I suppose.

Clang/LLVM does not support anything but C. For C++ you'd need GCC proper or GCC/LLVM. I beleive.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 17, 2009 2:12 UTC (Thu) by jdahlin (subscriber, #14990) [Link]

It supports both ObjC and C++, it may not support the standard as well as
GCC, but enough to compile a couple of small test programs. I'm confident
clang will deliver a C++ compiler reasonably compatible with GCC sometime
next year.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 16, 2009 21:54 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (4 responses)

If you're asking whether this "blocks" feature will be added to the Gcc C compiler, I would expect not until it gets very close to standardization as an ISO C feature. I don't know if Apple has placed this blocks thing before the C committee yet, or what the C committee thinks/would think of it. The GNU Gcc developers are very keen on observing relevant standards; proprietary features encourage lock-in. I doubt anybody would bother putting it in before that, given that the Clang C compiler has it.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 16, 2009 22:46 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

I will note further that the Lambda feature in C++ has different syntax from Blocks, and there will be strong pressure, particularly from implementers, on the C committee to match the C++ Lambda syntax, i.e. using "[]" where Apple's Blocks uses "^". (Ironically, "[]" looks typographically more like a block, and "^" looks more like a lambda.) I expect Apple to support both syntaxes in the end.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 17, 2009 1:29 UTC (Thu) by busterb (subscriber, #560) [Link]

But [] is used by objective C to call methods, so Apple is likely to not support this, at least not OS
X's most-supported language.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 18, 2009 8:01 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> The GNU Gcc developers are very keen on observing relevant standards; proprietary features encourage lock-in.

Here is a list of non-standard GCC extensions:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-gcc-hacks/

You can probably find a better list; this one took me only 15 seconds to find.

Blocks in C, not C++

Posted Sep 19, 2009 3:22 UTC (Sat) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]

Just read the GCC documentation:

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.4.1/gcc/C-Extensions....