4 ms·

The key idea here seems to be to use function pointer's type to enforce type safety rather than using the data "handle" type (that is often found in implementat

The key idea here seems to be to use function pointer's type to enforce type safety rather than using the data "handle" type (that is often found in implementations inspired by Sean Barrett's strechy_buffers). > One annoying thing about C is that it does not consider these two variables to have the same type C23 solves that too: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3037.pdf https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3037.pdf Supported by latest GCC and Clang, but not by MSVC.

dhooper 1y ago
Author here. Not quite. The key idea is about using a union to associate type information with a generic data type. Type casting a function is not the only way to use that type information. I discuss that as well as the C23 changes in the footnotes and the "typeof on old compilers" section.
- wahern 1y ago
  FWIW, as far back as 2015 my feature check library documents Visual Studio as supporting "__typeof".[1] Note the leading but not trailing underscores. Perhaps I was mistaken, but I usually tested that sort of thing. It's also possible __typeof had slightly different semantics. [1] See https://github.com/wahern/autoguess/blob/b44556e4/config.h.guess#L132 https://github.com/wahern/autoguess/blob/b44556e4/config.h.g... (that's the 2015 revision, but HEAD has the same code).
  - dhooper 1y ago
    msvc 19.39 is the first to support it, which I mention in the article. You can confirm it didn't work up through 19.38 in godbolt [1]. I don't use Visual Studio, so I don't know what version of that first started using msvc 19.39 [1] https://godbolt.org/z/M7zPYdssP https://godbolt.org/z/M7zPYdssP
    - wahern 1y ago
      This is gonna haunt me. Digging through some old code of mine (circa 2009) I found this bit: #elif _MSC_VER >= 1310 #define typeof(type) __typeof(type) So somehow I had the impression Visual Studio .NET 2003 (7.1)[1] added __typeof. I'm still holding out hope someone will come to my rescue and reply that once upon a time MSVC had __typeof, but removed it. But for now it seems past me is gaslighting present me. [1] See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/overview/compiler-versions?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/overview/compiler-vers... for mapping between Visual Studio versions and _MSC_VER. EDIT: Ah ha! It seems Microsoft did support __typeof, but perhaps only for "managed" C++ (aka C++ .NET)? > One thing to watch out for when using the __typeof operator in managed C++ is that __typeof(wchar_t) can return different values depending on the compilation options. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2002/february/visual-c-net-tips-and-tricks-to-bolster-your-managed-c-code-in-visual-studio-net https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2002... (See also https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2005/july/c-at-work-enum-declarations-template-function-specialization https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2005...)
    - rucikir 1y ago
      Playing with MSVC's typeof, I've just discovered that its docs [1] have an example that has never worked with any released version of MSVC... MSVC doesn't support `typeof` applied on function types and function pointers! (bug report [2] [3]). Is there anyone from the compiler team around here? :) [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-language/typeof-c?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-language/typeof-c?vi... [2]: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Support-for-typeof-Operator-in-C/10407342#T-N10933706 https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Support-for-ty... [3]: https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/Kn51qrj99 https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/Kn51qrj99

dhooper 1y ago

Author here. Not quite. The key idea is about using a union to associate type information with a generic data type. Type casting a function is not the only way to use that type information. I discuss that as well as the C23 changes in the footnotes and the "typeof on old compilers" section.

wahern 1y ago
FWIW, as far back as 2015 my feature check library documents Visual Studio as supporting "__typeof".[1] Note the leading but not trailing underscores. Perhaps I was mistaken, but I usually tested that sort of thing. It's also possible __typeof had slightly different semantics. [1] See https://github.com/wahern/autoguess/blob/b44556e4/config.h.guess#L132 https://github.com/wahern/autoguess/blob/b44556e4/config.h.g... (that's the 2015 revision, but HEAD has the same code).
- dhooper 1y ago
  msvc 19.39 is the first to support it, which I mention in the article. You can confirm it didn't work up through 19.38 in godbolt [1]. I don't use Visual Studio, so I don't know what version of that first started using msvc 19.39 [1] https://godbolt.org/z/M7zPYdssP https://godbolt.org/z/M7zPYdssP
  - wahern 1y ago
    This is gonna haunt me. Digging through some old code of mine (circa 2009) I found this bit: #elif _MSC_VER >= 1310 #define typeof(type) __typeof(type) So somehow I had the impression Visual Studio .NET 2003 (7.1)[1] added __typeof. I'm still holding out hope someone will come to my rescue and reply that once upon a time MSVC had __typeof, but removed it. But for now it seems past me is gaslighting present me. [1] See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/overview/compiler-versions?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/overview/compiler-vers... for mapping between Visual Studio versions and _MSC_VER. EDIT: Ah ha! It seems Microsoft did support __typeof, but perhaps only for "managed" C++ (aka C++ .NET)? > One thing to watch out for when using the __typeof operator in managed C++ is that __typeof(wchar_t) can return different values depending on the compilation options. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2002/february/visual-c-net-tips-and-tricks-to-bolster-your-managed-c-code-in-visual-studio-net https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2002... (See also https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2005/july/c-at-work-enum-declarations-template-function-specialization https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2005...)
  - rucikir 1y ago
    Playing with MSVC's typeof, I've just discovered that its docs [1] have an example that has never worked with any released version of MSVC... MSVC doesn't support `typeof` applied on function types and function pointers! (bug report [2] [3]). Is there anyone from the compiler team around here? :) [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-language/typeof-c?view=msvc-170 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-language/typeof-c?vi... [2]: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Support-for-typeof-Operator-in-C/10407342#T-N10933706 https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Support-for-ty... [3]: https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/Kn51qrj99 https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/Kn51qrj99