Message-ID: <39469F22.1F361A30@earthlink.net> From: Martin Ambuhl Organization: Nocturnal Aviation X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Simple question: Subfunctions References: <394693AA DOT 32CB056C AT gmx DOT de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 55 Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 20:51:31 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.23.128.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse AT earthlink DOT net X-Trace: newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net 960929491 63.23.128.163 (Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:51:31 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:51:31 PDT To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Hanno Stehling wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm just teaching myself c++ and I have a question about functions: > > in Turbo Pascal it is possible to create subfunctions like > > procedure normal_function; > procedure subfunction; > begin > do_something; > end; > begin > subfunction; > end; > > Is this also possible in c++? There is a bit of danger in answering in this newsgroup, but here is a go 1) The standard C and C++ languages do not support functions declared except at file scope. It is an error to declare one inside another. Most C and C++ programmers don't miss such things. 2) GCC *does* provide for this as an extension. It is explained in your documentation, even to some of the implementation details. If you ever might need to port your code to a non-GCC implemenation, all such code would need to be rewritten. Even though the GCC documentation thumbs its nose at this possibility, some of us work in the real world. 3) The class structures and templating functionality available in C++ should make whatever need you have for this fairly small. Hundreds of thousands of C programmers do quite well without embedded functions; the additional flexibility of the C++ syntax makes them even less useful. 4) Almost all programmers when introduced to a new leanguage try to make it fir into the categories of the ones they know. This is almost always an error. Importing ideas from other languages should wait until you have learned the new language on its own terms. As it happens, the Pascal program structure is quite horrid. It is probably good that GCC allows this particular feature, but should be saved for situations in which it has a real purpose. There are worse things in Pascal, most of which people migrating from Pascal to C or C++ think they miss. I dread your asking about those. -- Martin Ambuhl mambuhl AT earthlink DOT net What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn. - Henry Adams A thick skin is a gift from God. - Konrad Adenauer