Comment by krapht

It's interesting to me to see how easily you can reach a much safer C without adding _everything_ from C++ as a toy project. I really enjoyed the read!

Though yes, you should probably just write C-like C++ at that point, and the result sum types used made me chuckle in that regard because they were added with C++17. This person REALLY wants modern CPP features..

No name mangling by default, far simpler toolchain, no dependence on libstdc++, compiles faster, usable with TCC/chibicc (i.e. much more amenable to custom tooling, be it at the level of a lexer, parser, or full compiler).

C’s simplicity can be frustrating, but it’s an extremely hackable language thanks to that simplicity. Once you opt in to C++, even nominally, you lose that.

> I'm baffled as to why you would want to use macros to emulate c++.

I like the power of destructors (auto cleanup) and templates (generic containers). But I also want a language that I can parse. Like, at all.

C is pretty easy to parse. Quite a few annoying corner cases, some context sensitive stuff, but still pretty workable. C++ on the other hand? It’s mostly pick a frontend or the highway.

Perhaps but a project using this stops you from writing any old C++ in your C. Writing C++ in a C style has no such protection.

It's choosing which features are allowed in.

>Nothing is stopping you from writing c-like c++ if that's what you like style wise.

You'll just have to get used to the C++ community screaming at you that it's the wrong way to write C++ and that you should just use Go or Zig instead

Embedded CPU vendors not shipping C++ compilers is what usually stops people.