C And C++ Coding Standards

Question

What are best practices with regards to C and C++ coding standards? Should developers be allowed to willy-nilly mix them together. Are there any complications when linking

Answer 1

There are no good hard and fast rules here.

If the end product will always be linked with a C++ main() then it does not really matter. As you can always create headers that will do the correct thing.

If you are creating a library that needs to have a C and C++ interface but you can't assume the C++ linker then you will need to make sure you separated the C API from the C++ cleanly. At this point it is usually cleaner to do all the work in C and use C++ classes to proxy to the C.

For example:

/* c header */

struct CData
 { /* stuff */ };

void init( CData* data );
void fini( CData* data );
int getSomething( CData* data );
void doSomething( CData* data, int val );

// c++ header

extern "C" {
#include cdata.h
};

class CppData : private CData
 {
 public:
   CppData() { ::init( (CData*)this ); }
   ~CppData() { ::fini( (CData*)this ); }
   int getSomething() { return ::getSomething( (CData*)this ); }
   void doSomething( int val ) { :: doSomething( (CData*)this, val ); }
 };

I hope this helps.