[SG10] Should there be feature-testing for library features?
Nelson, Clark
clark.nelson at intel.com
Fri Jan 25 20:39:55 CET 2013
> Agreed, except for the part about adding new features to the language.
> For
> example, I would imagine my interpretation would be best served by the
> compiler making its internals available as a set of type definitions in
> an
> internal namespace: let's call it __compiler_internals__.
Now we're running into an ambiguity about what "the language" means.
Some people (very reasonably) consider "the language" to mean "stuff the compiler handles". Other people (also reasonably) consider "the language" to mean everything that's specified by the standard for the C++ programming language, including the library.
In any event, what you're talking about is certainly new stuff that would need to be provided by an implementation, which can't be used on an implementation that doesn't (yet) provide it. Making it possible for a program to determine whether an implementation provides it (yet) is precisely what I believe SG10 is all about.
Clark
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