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> Would it be fair to say that Zig is to C, what Rust is to C++? There's definitely something to that analogy, but I think it also misses a lot of really impor

> Would it be fair to say that Zig is to C, what Rust is to C++? There's definitely something to that analogy, but I think it also misses a lot of really important details. For example, Zig has generics, which right off the bat makes it hard to say that it's "like C". Also Rust enforces memory safety, which isn't like C or C++.

roblabla 5y ago
I mean, C11 also has generics, but I would really suggest not using it X). See https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/generic https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/generic Of couse, it's a much less powerful feature, there's nothing like interfaces or stuff, just a way to "overload" based on the type.
- yisonPylkita 5y ago
  Thank you. I had no idea that you could do such a thing in C11 preprocessor
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    _Generic() is not a preprocessor feature, but a "real" language feature (I was confused too when I saw it first though). The only preprocessor part in the example is mapping the function-like macro 'cbrt(X)' to the language keyword '_Generic(X)'.
woodrowbarlow 5y ago
i love that zig doesn't have a special syntax for generics, it just allows anything to be resolved at compile-time -- including types. which gives you generics 'for free'.
- maleldil 5y ago
  I've only cursory of Zig, so bear with me. Does this mean that Zig templates are like C++, that is, duck typing? Or is there a notion of constraining the type arguments?
  - robinei 5y ago
    You can constrain type arguments with a compile-time `if` check, and generate a compile error on violation.
  - kristoff_it 5y ago
    It's duck typed but it's not based on a funky and limited syntax, but rather types at comptime become normal arguments to functions that you can then inspect using normal Zig code. I wrote a blog post about comptime if you want to learn more: https://kristoff.it/blog/what-is-zig-comptime/ https://kristoff.it/blog/what-is-zig-comptime/
  - dnautics 5y ago
    It's duck typed but let's say your "template" takes an integer and divides by two depending on some boolean (perhaps you need to return a lookup table of sometimes half the bitwidth of an integer type). That function called by your template at compile time to maybe-divide-by-two is in the same language as runtime zig, and you could even conceivably call that very same function as a compiled entity in the runtime context.

roblabla 5y ago

I mean, C11 also has generics, but I would really suggest not using it X). See https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/generic https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/generic Of couse, it's a much less powerful feature, there's nothing like interfaces or stuff, just a way to "overload" based on the type.

yisonPylkita 5y ago
Thank you. I had no idea that you could do such a thing in C11 preprocessor
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  _Generic() is not a preprocessor feature, but a "real" language feature (I was confused too when I saw it first though). The only preprocessor part in the example is mapping the function-like macro 'cbrt(X)' to the language keyword '_Generic(X)'.

woodrowbarlow 5y ago

i love that zig doesn't have a special syntax for generics, it just allows anything to be resolved at compile-time -- including types. which gives you generics 'for free'.

maleldil 5y ago
I've only cursory of Zig, so bear with me. Does this mean that Zig templates are like C++, that is, duck typing? Or is there a notion of constraining the type arguments?
- robinei 5y ago
  You can constrain type arguments with a compile-time `if` check, and generate a compile error on violation.
- kristoff_it 5y ago
  It's duck typed but it's not based on a funky and limited syntax, but rather types at comptime become normal arguments to functions that you can then inspect using normal Zig code. I wrote a blog post about comptime if you want to learn more: https://kristoff.it/blog/what-is-zig-comptime/ https://kristoff.it/blog/what-is-zig-comptime/
- dnautics 5y ago
  It's duck typed but let's say your "template" takes an integer and divides by two depending on some boolean (perhaps you need to return a lookup table of sometimes half the bitwidth of an integer type). That function called by your template at compile time to maybe-divide-by-two is in the same language as runtime zig, and you could even conceivably call that very same function as a compiled entity in the runtime context.