Thread with 6 posts
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USERS: please add fat pointers for arrays to c
C COMMITTEE: thats too hard. here is a limited form of dependent typing which we think is good. Do you like this
joke explanation: fat pointers are one of the most glaring absences in C. they would not only make manual bounds checking easier, but would help out compilers and sanitisers with their tasks. they're a simple concept, easy to implement, and wouldn't complicate the type system…
…so, naturally, the committee gave us Variable Length Arrays and Variably Modified Types, which do such nightmarish things to the type system that C++ and several compilers refuse to support them, are wildly impractical to use in many cases, and don't solve enough problems.
@hikari “a limited form of dependent typing” what the hell did they do–
@hikari oh i see, that second reply didn’t federate to my instance