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I started my software development career using FORTRAN, taught myself C, suffered through Pascal and despise Visual Basic. I'm an EE that just learned how to do this. Back in the beginning, there were no IDEs just text editors, so I naturally developed the habit of putting one function in one file. As I moved on to C++, I continued this style with my class development - one class per file. I suppose I picked up this style from the people I worked with, early source control systems I used (CMS/MMS anyone?) and what not.
Now I admit I am no C++ guru. I have seen people on stack overflow answer a C++ question with so much mind numbing detail that my eyes glaze. I view some or most of the esoteric aspects of c++ (like operator overloading) as dubious at best. Sounds good initially but later on in maintenance, ugh.
So, coding style question - do you embed classes within classes? I suppose if the object is never used outside of it's main file, it sort of makes sense. But it makes it a $itch to track things down. Then, other modules that include the header file for the parent start referencing the embedded classes, and it becomes spaghetti code. I know it's valid C++, but....
Thoughts? I'm probably just being a curmudgeon. Currently doing battle with lifting a VC6 project to VS2022. To say it's "interesting" is putting it lightly but that's for another post.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I never nest classes in any languages - one class one file ( 2 in c++ )
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Nowadays, with IDE editors having multiple tabs and search commands for traversing a large set of files, it is sort of feasible.
In the old days when an editor handled a single file at a time, and you had to use an external, command-line search-files tool, splitting a system on thousands of files was really terrible to work with.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I've done it, I'm not proud of it.
IMO, there is no real benefits.
On of the problems is that if you have nested classes in a public header, it makes things soooo much more fun (in a bad way), especially if the inner class is public.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Pascal doesn't have classes, but defining local functions within an outer function is the common practice. If you see PROGRAM as a little more than a PROCEDURE with global initialization, every function/procedure that you write lies inside another function/procedure(/program).
You probably see great advantages of hiding some matters local to a class within that class inside the class definition. In Pascal, you would hide helper functions for a larger function inside that larger function - just like you have local variables and data structures. Also note that in Pascal, a parameterless function was called just by its name, with no empty ()s. So you could change a simple variable to a function calculating the value, without making changes to the code using it. (It took several decades before C# got properties, to do the same!) If I change a local simple variable to a calculated, but still local, value, I see no major reason for why I should have to move the declaration of it out to the global level.
During my student days, we migrated from Pascal to C, requiring all functions to be declared in a flat space. Also, the convention of creating a separate file for each function, even a three-line one, was introduced. What was a nice, closed set of a major function / procedure and its helper functions, was spread out all over the place. You couldn't use a simple editor search function to find definition and all its uses (calls) - you had to use an external 'search files' function, outside the editor. (Our editors at that time did not have a built-in 'search files'.) We did use a lot of hardcopy printouts of source code in those days, and having to print even a 3-line function as a separate file, on separate sheets, increased the amount of paper by a large factor. By Unix/C standards, conventions required a lot of formal blurb (copyleft etc.), as well as inclusion/processing of sometimes huge header files, which in turn lead to number of #ifdefs and stuff like that. In Pascal, a 3-line function was no more than a 3-line function, declared in the scope where it was used, just like the variables. Old Pascal programmers did not see C as any great progress ...
There is no principal difference between classes within classes or functions within functions. The arguments for using or not using it is the same.
One major argument against nested procedures/functions was related to Pascal visibility rules: The tiniest, innermost function doing the simplest helper function had access to all its own local variables, of course, but also everything in the enclosing function, and everything at the next outer level and so on all the way out to the program global variables and functions / routines.
Languages with static nesting was quite common in the 1970s and 80s, and it was used frequently used. (Ask someone learning compilers in those years to explain what a 'static link' is - maybe you'll learn something new!). To handle the issue of the innermost little helper function having the greatest access, to 'everything', some languages required you to export symbols not only to the outside, but also to the inner functions, and the inner functions to import them. (To reduce clutter, some languages let you export/import 'pervasively', so that no further import/export was required for the next levels.)
After shelving Pascal, I have not used much function nesting - for a couple decades, it wasn't possible in C based languages, so I got out of the habit. I cannot recall a single case of nested class definitions. But when I learned of C#, properties and accessors, I became a heavy user of that - which is certainly related.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I do, but the embedded classes are always marked private - they are only accessible within the containing class.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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yeah, no private at all listed...
it doesn't help that VS2022 has some of the most ridiculous compiler errors. One error typically generates N other gripes.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Every time I've embedded classes inside another class, some new requirement down the road requires I remove this embedded class and make it stand on its own.
I will occasionally put two classes in a file, especially when one is the <type t=""> for a custom collection class. The collection class is usually very short (<40 lines) and I put it at the top of the file so both classes are visible on the first screen in the IDE.
modified 1 min ago.
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happy to see it's not just me.
The only two times I have seen this style, they both came from CS grads whiz kids. I'm now going through a lot of code from WK#1 where he forgot to initialize a bunch of variables.
Side note: I know VS2022 allows you to ignore uninitialized variables, but why in God's good name would you ever turn that off? Been burned to many times by everything working in debug and phantom failures in release.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Statement 1: Every rule has an exception.
Statement 2: Statement 1 is a rule. Therefore Statement 1 has an exception.
Conclusion: There is at least one rule which has no exception.
Would you agree with this conclusion? If so, is there any example of a rule having no exception?
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Friends don't let friends program in Basic.
If you can't find time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find time to do it again?
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator
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Kurt Gödel proved a version of Statement 1:
In any formal language, there are questions that can be asked but not answered.
A perfect example of Gödel's incompleteness law can be found in math:
- Positive Integers (lengths) can subtract a larger number from a smaller number. The answer is a negative integer, leading to:
- All integers can divide and result in a fraction, leading to:
- Fractions can be used in geometry to result in real numbers, leading to:
- Real Numbers can have square roots that are imaginary, leading to:
- Complex numbers, etc...
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In a certain village, a barber shaves all those who do not shave themselves. Who shaves the barber?
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants"
Chuckles the clown
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Behind every paradox lies a Cretan.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Wordle 1,045 2/6
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Wordle 1,045 3/6
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Wordle 1,045 4/6
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Wordle 1,045 3/6
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Jeremy Falcon
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Wordle 1,045 3/6*
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"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wordle 1,045 4/6*
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Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Frederick Nietzsche
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🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
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In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 1,045 4/6
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Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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Wordle 1,045 3/6
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WordleBot
Skill 74/99
Luck 74/99
If you can't explain something to a six year old, you really don't understand it yourself. (Albert Einstein)
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