DJ Delorie wrote: >> Good! In that case, you don't need them to be pointers at all. :-) >> >> I think you should just declare them as integer types. > > That makes initializing function pointers messy. > > Besides, they're not integers. They're pointers. I'd *like* to be > able to dereference them in some simple ways in the future; telling me > to "just use integers" is a step backwards. Why don't I "just use > assembler" or "just use C"? that defeats the whole purpose of having > a high level language.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Sure, it would be nice if these things were pointers. I'd be happy to see a specification for how these alternative pointers work, and I'd be happy to consider a patch that made a serious stab at implementing that specification. However, I will reject any patch to support these alternative pointers in C++ until all the language issues have been resolved. I'm strongly opposed to adding more extensions to GNU C++ without thinking through all of their implications. We've suffered far too much pain for far too many years because of doing precisely this in the past. I would also argue against this extension in C at this point because users expect GNU C extensions to work in C++ as well. However, I think it would be presumptuous for me to try to reject supporting these pointers in GNU C; that's for the C maintainers to say. Since you seem to be hesitant (and, reasonably so, in my opinion!) to work on the language-design issues for C++, I would recommend the integer approach as a way of providing the functionality you need in the short term. Sorry, -- Mark Mitchell CodeSourcery [EMAIL PROTECTED] (650) 331-3385 x713