🚀 go-pugleaf

devitto@ferndown.ate.slb.com wrote:
> What about Bjarne's idea of "include" as a keyword that only has the effect
> of a #include if the file has not been "include"d already.

> I suppose the idea is that the compiler builds a table (like gcc does for
> wrapped includes) - pretty simple really.

> Ideas about why this won't work ???

Personally I'll continue to advocate "#once" to prevent multiple 
inclusion of a header for these reasons:

  Although it adds no new capability to the language, it would be trivial 
  to implement and to specify in a standard. The benefit it that it
  prevents programmers from having to do a little of the kind of mindless
  robotic work that computers do so much better than humans.

  I don't like Bjarne's idea because I would think that the writer of
  any given header knows more about how many times it should be included
  than the user. If it *does* need to be multi-included, it is reasonable
  to expect to the programmer would forget to use the traditional include
  mechanism alarmingly often. C++ already has enough things like this that
  silently cause strange errors when the programmer forgets something
  (like everyone's favorite, the switch statement). Conversely, many would 
  countinue to use the old mechanism, which would not work too well, while 
  #once is 100% backwards compatible.

--
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