Re: C23 thoughts and opinions

On 22/05/2024 17:55, David Brown wrote:

In an attempt to bring some topicality to the group, has anyone started using, or considering, C23 ?  There's quite a lot of change in it, especially compared to the minor changes in C17.
 <https://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n3220.pdf>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C23_(C_standard_revision)>
<https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/23>
 I like that it tidies up a lot of old stuff - it is neater to have things like "bool", "static_assert", etc., as part of the language rather than needing a half-dozen includes for such basic stuff.
 I like that it standardises a several useful extensions that have been in gcc and clang (and possibly other compilers) for many years.
 I'm not sure it will make a big difference to my own programming - when I want "typeof" or "chk_add()", I already use them in gcc.  But for people restricted to standard C, there's more new to enjoy.  And I prefer to use standard syntax when possible.
 "constexpr" is something I think I will find helpful, in at least some circumstances.
 

So I'm currently writing some code (you can follow my progress on github, it is a new branch in the Baby X resource compiler project). And it's just standard well understood algorithm code to manipulate XML trees. And I certainly don't feel the neeed for static_assert. But even boolean type and const. Of course quite alot of the functions don't actually change the structures they are passed. But is littering the code with const going to help? And why do you really need a boolean when an int can hold either a zero or non-zero value?
And don't you just want a pared down, clean language?
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