3 ms·

Root problem is the lack of namespaces in C, making collisions inevitable and painful to deal with

• flohofwoe 4y ago
  C doesn't even need namespaces for this, a simple stdc_ prefix for stdlib functions and types would also work (see C23 stdbit.h, I hope this won't be an outlier).
  • im3w1l 4y ago
    With proper namespaces you can import stuff so you don't have to prefix with the namespace every time.
    • flohofwoe 4y ago
      Yes, but we can't simply port C++ namespaces over because this requires symbol name mangling. C could be using 'namespace prefixes' instead with something like 'usingprefix stdc_', this wouldn't require changes to the symbol format, and would provide most of the features of C++ namespaces.
  • int_19h 4y ago
    That gets very ugly very quick for something as basic as e.g. memcpy or strcmp.
• kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  C23 technically has to support namespaces for attributes. It'll be interesting to see if they get adopted into the core language at some point.