@Ketan_Lalcheta wrote:
Hi
I started customization using toolkit since ProE 4.0 and never used c files as solution. We used to create cpp files (C++ instead of C) and used extern C for user_initialize.
I am wondering what is the best way to go for this? C or C++?
Any thoughts?
Hello all,
'C or C++' is a good question.
Side note - a source file extension is not a reliable indicator of how the code will be compiled. '.c' and '.cpp' happened to be the default extensions which visual studio knows about and visual studio auto-magically sets compiler flags to either /TC or /TP ...
Another note - extern "C" with user_initialize and user_terminate is only a small part of the deal. What actually is happening behind the scenes is Pro/Toolkit authors had made provisions for dual compilation by adding
PRO_BEGIN_C_DECLS and PRO_END_C_DECLS macros to every header file. Those macros are defined in ProANSI.h file and trace their origins to __cplusplus compiler macro.
Back to C/C++ - the good discussion about C being (or not being) a subset of C++ could be found here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1201593/where-is-c-not-a-subset-of-c
IMHO, the choice of C or C++ or 'C++ with C' is mostly dictated by the complexity of any given app and not by Pro/Toolkit API.
Domain driven software design, test driven software development, linking with external third party libraries, using STL containers, namespaces, exceptions, functional or OO style of programming, resource ownership management and so on are the factors requiring careful consideration.
HIH.
FV.
