🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1995Aug4.163853.11570@forte.com>, mikes@forte.com (Mike Schilling) writes:
-->I'd like the Standard to say something like "A C++ compiler must define 
-->which C compilers it supports extern "C" access to.  extern "C" access to 
-->is defined precisely as: ..."

Well, it's not actually possible to give a complete list of all the compilers
extern "C" is compatible with as the contents of that list vary and are outside the
control of the C++ compiler vendor.  Defining what the "C" convention means is is
rather more useful.

-->It is still useful for the Standard to define how
-->extern "C" behaves, so that programs using it can be portable among
-->compilers which support it.

It's not possible for the standard to define how ``extern "C"'' behaves
because there is no single C calling convention -- even on a given
hardware platform there could be many.  Until there is some globally
defined set of calling conventions names it won't be possible
to say what ``extern "anything"''

However, pragmatically there *is* an ``obvious'' meaning for ``extern "C"''
in many cases (e.g. as defined by that same vendors C compiler) so it's
probably worth keeping it, even if it's not well-defined.  I just
don't envy the Standard Committee's job trying to find the wording to
express what ``extern "C"'' means.

-- jP --