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Ask HN: What one change in C would make it a better language for you?
- jjgreen 3y ago"case" variable scope
- mytailorisrich 3y agocase x: { int local_var; } break;
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThat might have issues with fallthrough. case 'a': int x = 7; // no break; case 'b': // Did we get here through 'b', or through 'a'? // Is x in scope, or not? Is it initialized, or not?
- stncls 3y agoA very surface change (almost syntactic sugar) that would be neat for me is some form of generics. Specifically, to allow me to implement an algorithm once for different data types. Right now I do it with preprocessor macros and includes; it works but feels wrong. Going deeper, but not as far as changing the language (not hoping for memory safety here), I would like better research and documentation for undefined behavior (UB). I'm not completely opposed to UB. I understand it is an unfortunate performance/safety trade-off that's not fully avoidable in a historical language like C. However, there are many types of UB, and for a few of them, the performance benefits feel theoretical (not supported by empirical evidence). I would love some before/after benchmarks with the types of UB that can be disabled in the compiler, and some open-minded discussion afterwards.
- sigsev_251 3y agoDefer (which also means lambdas). I really hope that the proposal gets in the next standard.
- tsukikage 3y agoNamespaces.
- DLA 3y agoBounds checks on arrays/strings. This would prevent the largest class of errors (buffer overflows) seen in C code.
- Shawnj2 3y agoThere’s a lot of cases where they wouldn’t work because passing a pointer to an element is the same as passing an array reference.
- pestatije 3y agodeprecate headers
- logicalmonster 3y agoI'm not sure if that horse could ever be put back in the barn, but I think my mindset for using C would probably feel a lot different if somehow it could be made a strict subset of C++.
- AlectronikLabs 3y agoModules. No more duplicating code into header files, just import a module like in modern languages. I love C but really hate headers. Then, second for namespaces.
- didgetmaster 3y agoThe default behavior for a case within a switch statement should be to break. If you want to fall through to the next case, it should have been an explicit command (e.g. fallthrough). switch(x) { case 1: DoSomething(); case 2: DoSomethingElse(); case 3: SomePrep(); fallthrough; case 4: DoMore(); default: DoNothing; } Only one statement needed to have case 3 fall through to case 4. No breaks needed at the end of any other cases.
- mikewarot 3y agoIt's not just one, but a short list get rid of Macros adopt Pascal style pointer references... @ is an address, p^ is what p points to adopt some form of counted strings, with a null on the end for compatibility adopt Pascal style cast statements, with each path being exclusive (default break)
- bjourne 3y agoIf the brain-dead implicit type promotion rules were removed. E.g unsigned int a = 5; signed int b = -10; bool c = a + b > 0; c is true.
- akasakahakada 3y agoI ; don't; know;