I decided to try out betterC with the most trivial example I could think of, but why doesn't this work?

extern(C) int main()
{
	char[] hello = "hello";
	printf(hello);

	return 0;
}

On Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 18:42:57 UTC, Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole wrote:

extern(C) int main()
{
    import core.stdc.stdio;

    string hello = "hello";
    printf(hello.ptr);

    return 0;
}

import core.stdc.stdio;

This generates Error: undefined identifier `size_t`.

On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 08:19:55 UTC, Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole wrote:

I have in fact defined a module called object. How is that related to this error?

I'm interested in betterC as a curiosity, and trying to explore the extent to which D classes and object-oriented programming can be preserved within its bounds (because I really like classes, and I really like D, and I really hate C++, and I'm trying to learn about bare-metal programming).

Thank you, by the way, for sharing your knowledge and time.

On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 13:17:08 UTC, confused wrote:

You can read the documentation for object.d here. It's kind of important.

On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 13:17:08 UTC, confused wrote:

It is shadowing default implicit "import object;", here a demonstration

// this example shows default implicit import of "object" module
// compile this example:
//   ldc2 -c test.d
// output:
//   tuple("object", "core", "main", "thisModule")

// just a random import
import core.stdc.stdio;

void main() { }

alias thisModule = __traits(parent, main);
pragma(msg,  __traits(allMembers, thisModule)); // has implicitly imported 'object' module

On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 13:17:08 UTC, confused wrote:

If you are looking for a better C you are not looking for classes

You contradict yourself

If you heard about betterC, then you heard about this: https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html

Read it again, and specially this part: https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html#consequences

C has no GC, therefore no class, see, your contradiction ;)

On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 13:31:37 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

I'm not sure which specific part of the documentation was supposed to illuminate the exact nature of that error.

On Saturday, 2 September 2023 at 01:05:39 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

Actually, I'm not looking for C, I'm looking for better C. C with classes would, in fact, be better. Except I hate C++.

In any case, I read all those links already, but D documentation can be rather out of date sometimes, and after having found a blog online about retaining classes in betterC, I decided to try it out. What that blog failed to mention was that such a simple means of retaining classes would conflict with stdc.

So I guess my next question is why, exactly, classes can, in fact, be implemented in betterC, but are not?