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justcuriousab | 7 months ago

Did Safe C++ ever have a full, correct, fully compliant, reference implementation, or was there only (closed-source) Circle as some kind of reference implementation? Circle, as far as I know, is closed-source.

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aw1621107|7 months ago

> Did Safe C++ ever have a full, correct, fully compliant, reference implementation, or was there only (closed-source) Circle as some kind of reference implementation?

Technically speaking the clauses on either side of the "or" aren't mutually exclusive. You can have a "full, correct, fully compliant, reference implementation" that is also a closed-source implementation!

Well, unless the implication that Circle isn't "full, correct, [and] fully compliant", in which case I feel I should ask "with respect to what?" and "why do you need those requirements?"

justcuriousab|7 months ago

But Safe C++ and Circle are different languages, right? And Circle is not the same as the Safe C++ proposal that was submitted, right? There are presumably differences between them, and I do not know what those differences are, and I do not know if those differences were documented somewhere. I cannot find any occurrences of "reference implementation" in the Safe C++ draft.

pjmlp|7 months ago

Most languages including C and C++, had leading closed source implementations, that is why being standardised by ISO mattered.

justcuriousab|7 months ago

But standardization also matters for avoiding vendor lock-in, right?

Like, Python and Javascript both have many "implementations", and those are some of the most popular languages. Python does not have an ISO specification. But Javascript does have an Ecma standard, ECMAScript.

Rust is getting another implementation in the form of gccrs. And there is work on a specification for Rust https://rustfoundation.org/media/ferrous-systems-donates-fer... . Arguably not a standard, but still helpful.