Numerical C

[guy at rlgvax.UUCP]

According to some papers on the "C++" language done at Bell (which they're
now just calling "C" and are calling what those of us in the real world
know as "C" "old C"), you can:

	1) add new "abstract data types" to the language

	2) overload existing operators and assign their function to
	   C routines (possibly add new operators, I don't remember
	   offhand)

	3) tell the compiler to expand certain functions inline

and, in one of the papers, they used these functions to add a complex data
type to C - with all the arithmetic operators - without changing the compiler.

The papers are available from AT&T Bell Laboratories; unfortunately, somebody
took them home so I don't have the CSTR numbers available.

Go forth and get them - this may be the (short-term) future of C... (on the
subject of whether all of this is good, the deponent sayeth not)

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy