Is this true? .:Resolved:.

[voidflux]

I saw this message on another programming forum and I didn't agree with some of the things he was saying about C strings in C compared to C++ and some other comments. This was in responce to a newbie asking a question about programming. Any clarification would be great.

I only suggest C because C++ starts to take power away from the programmer. I very much enjoy doing cstring manipulations. I find it very interesting. I have an assignment that can use some of my tools I have written in my data structures class (which must be in C++). I ran into this very irratating feature of C++. A line of code such as:

char *a = "Hello, world!";

would produce a nice ready to use cstring that I can start manipulating that is compiled into the binary. However, in C++, that cstring is placed into (read only/const char*) memory. Not even a type cast fixes it. So I must waste my cycles dynamically putting the string into r/w memory. Little things like this that turn up turn me away from C++. Strong typing which forces you to type cast ANY conversion between datatypes is somewhat annoying. References take away from forcing a programmer to learn and use the power of pointers.

Now don't get me wrong, these elements of C++ are great, really great for a big project that can have many errors that these syntax features will catch at the compilation level, but for learning reasons, one should really consider the power of a programming language to get the best understanding of what is going on. After I learned the very basics of C, I jumped into Java and then C++.

[CornedBee]

This is WRONG!

Whether a literal string is placed into modifiable memory or read-only memory is only a matter of compiler settings, never of the language. According to the standard I believe that compilers should default to RO in both languages, so this guy had it wrong for ages but only now stumbled upon his error because C++ is more typesafe.
A line of code such as
char *p = "Hello";
therefore always was invalid with the default GCC or VC++ settings in C and C++, but both compilers emitted at best a warning about it.

C++ doesn't take any power away from the programmer, but the programmer can choose to give up a little power in return for extreme usability enhancements.

But honestly, you must be crazy to enjoy cstring manipulation and find it interesting. It's extremely dull, as this guy undoubtly will find out eventually.

[voidflux]

hah that is what I wanted to hear.

Thanks!