Question

Overview:

I’m working with a hobby app. I want my program to be able to stick to “plain C”.

For several reasons, I have to use a C++ compiler, and the related programming enviroment program, that supports “Plain C”. And, for the same reasons, I cannot change to antoher compiler.

And, there are some C++ features that I have been coded, unintentionally.

For example, I’m not using namespaces or classes. My current programming job, is not “plain c” or “c++”, and I haven’t used them for some time, so, I may have forgotten which stuff is “plain c” only.

I have browsed in the internet, for “Plain C” examples. I have found that many other developers, have also post mixed “plain c” & “c++” examples, (some of them unintentionally).

I’m using some dynamically allocated structures. I have been using “malloc”, but I rather use “new” instead. I thought that some new standard & compiler versions of “plain c” allowed “new”, but, seems I’m wrong.

Seems that “new” is a “C++” feature, & if I really want to make a only “plain c”, I should use “malloc”.

The reason I want to stick to “plain C”, it’s because I’m working in a cross platform non-gui library / tool.

My current platform is “Windowze”, my Development Enviroments, are:

(1) CodeBlocks (MinGW)

(2) Bloodshed DevCPP

(3) Borland CBuilder 6

Although, my goal is to migrate it to Linux, too , and maybe other platforms, and other (command-line) compilers.

Quick not Tested Example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <strings.h>

struct MyData_T
{
  int  MyInt;
  char MyName[512];
  char *MyCharPtr;
};

typedef
  struct MyData_T *MyData_P;

MyData_P newData(char* AName)
{
  MyData_P Result = null;

  Result = malloc(sizeof(MyData_T));

  strcpy(Result->MyName, AName, strlen(AName));
  // do other stuff with fields

  return Result;
} // MyData_P newData(...)

int main(...)
{
  int ErrorCode = 0;

  MyData_P MyDataVar = newData("John Doe");

  // do more stuff with "MyDataVar";

  free(MyDataVar);

  return ErrorCode;
} // int main(...)

Questions

1. Where I can get a working “plain c only” compiler for x86 (windowze, linux) ?

2. Should I stick to use “malloc”, “calloc”, and similar ?

3. Should I consider to change to “C++” & “new”, instead ?

4. Is it valid to use “new” & “delete” in a “plain c” application ?

5. Any other suggestion ?

Thanks.

Disclaimer
Note: I already spent several hours trying not to post the same question, in Stackoverflow, but, none of the previous answers seem clear to me.

Answer 1

Remember that C and C++ are actually completely different languages. They share some common syntax, but C is a procedural language and C++ is object oriented, so they are different programming paradigms.

gcc should work just fine as a C compiler. I believe MinGW uses it. It also has flags you can specify to make sure it’s using the right version of C (e.g. C99).

If you want to stick with C then you simply won’t be able to use new (it’s not part of the C language) but there shouldn’t be any problems with moving to C++ for a shared library, just so long as you put your Object Oriented hat on when you do.

I’d suggest you just stick with the language you are more comfortable with. The fact that you’re using new suggests that will be C++, but it’s up to you.