Re: Do we care if C compilers start allowing "." on pointers?

On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 7:02 AM Paul E. McKenney <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> Currently, given a pointer "p", C allows p->a but not p.a.  There is a
> proposal from C++ [1] that is being considered for C.
>
> Do we care?
>
Does the proposal seem likely to be added to C++? The motivation is
very weak, in my opinion. Other languages are very different from
C/C++; they try to hide away memory management details, which are a
major part of C languages. (To prevent a holy war, my comments aren't
about the benefits and drawbacks of memory management in other
languages.)

As for the kernel, if C/C++ adopt this convention, we won't be able to
accept contributions which use '.' to access pointers until the
minimum version of the compilers support this feature, which I imagine
will take several years. My personal opinion would be to require '->'
even when the option is available, unless a much better motivation is
made.

Cheers!
-bw