Emil Dotchevski wrote:
Peter Dimov wrote:
Yuval Ronen wrote:
So I'll try to re-phrase. The point I tried to make is that the pthread philosophy would be accepted by the C/C++ standard, but the pthread exact syntax doesn't have to. The C/C++ standard can adopt a different syntax. Sure. We seem to agree that we want a C threading standard and a C++ threading standard, both based on the pthreads model, compatible with each other, supported by Microsoft and the rest of the world. I guess the key word we are disagreeing about is "compatible" (which is what Emil's talking about). I assume you want threads created with the C++ API to be able to be manipulated by the C API. I don't see any major advantage in that.
Because C++ is compatible with C, one can come up with infinite number of examples of useful inteoperability between C libraries and C++ programs, as well as C++ libraries and C programs. I don't see how you could not see the advantage of that.
Have you ever needed such interoperability in practice? I haven't. That's not to say it's nonsense. I just think it's rare enough to be negligible.
There's no precedence to such a thing. Do we want files opened with std::fstream to be read using fgetc()? Was this ever considered a factor when designing the C++ iostreams? Is there anyone missing this feature now? I've never heard anyone answering "yes" to any of those question (as much as that counts).
On the other hand, aren't most iostreams implementations based on the C standard library anyway? I can't answer the question whether it would make more sense if this was required by the C++ standard, however I'm pretty sure there are many benefits if such compatibility was official (which doesn't necessarily mean that there are no drawbacks.)
Again, saying "I'm pretty sure there are many benefits if..." is hypothetical. I haven't met such benefits myself in real life.
It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with such C<->C++ interoperability, as long as it doesn't cripple the C++ API.
My point exactly.
So we agree ;-)
If it prevents creating the "ideal" C++ interface (which, IMHO, is something along the lines of Howard's non-copyable thread class), then I'd consider it a disadvantage.
If someone can show that to be the case, I'd agree.
I'd leave that for Howard (whose hands finally slipped out ;-) ) to answer. He'll be much better at this than me...