Tonclib is coded mostly in C. The reason for this was twofold. First, I still have it in my head that C is lower level than C++, and that the former would compile to faster code; and faster is good. Second, it's easier for C++ to call C than the other way around so, for maximum compatibility, it made sense to code it in C. But these arguments always felt a little weak and now that I'm trying to port tonclib's functions to the DS, the question pops up again.

On many occasions, I just hated not going for C++. Not so much for its higher-level functionality like classes, inheritance and other OOPy goodness (or badness, some might say), but more because I would really, really like to make use of things like function overloading, default parameters and perhaps templates too.

For example, say you have a blit routine. You can implement this in multiple ways: with full parameters (srcX/Y, dstX/Y, width/height), using Point and Rect structs (srcRect, dstPoint) or perhaps just a destination point, using the full source-bitmap. In other words:

In C++, this would be no problem. You just declare and define the functions and the compiler mangles the names internally to avoid naming conflicts. You can even make some of the functions inline facades that morphs the arguments for the One True Implementation. In C, however, this won't work. You have to do the name mangling yourself, like blit, blit2, blit3, or blitEx or blitRect, and so on and so forth. Eeghh, that is just ugly.

Speaking of points and rectangles, that's another thing. Structs for points and rects are quite useful, so you make one using int members (you should always start with ints). But sometimes it's better to have smaller versions, like shorts. Or maybe unsigned variations. And so you end up with:

And then that for rects too. And perhaps 3D vectors. And maybe add floats to the mix as well. This all requires that you make structs which are identical except for the primary datatype. That just sounds kinda dumb to me.

But wait, it gets even better! You might like to have some functions to go with these structs, so now you have to create different sets (yes, sets) of functions that differ only by their parameter types too! AAAARGGGGHHHHH, for the love of IPU, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Neen, neen; driewerf neen! >_<

That's how it would be in C. In C++, you can just use a template like so:

and be done with it. And then you can make a single template function (or was it function template, I always forget) that works for all the datatypes and let the compiler work it out. Letting the computer do the work for you, hah! What will they think of next.

Oh, and there's namespaces too! Yes! In C, you always have to worry about if some other library has something with the same name as you're thinking of using. This is where all those silly prefixes come from (oh hai, FreeImage!). With C++, there's a clean way out of that: you can encapsulate them in a namespace and when a conflict arises you can use mynamespace::foo to get out of it. And if there's no conflicts, use using namespace mynamespace; and type just plain foo. None of that FreeImage_foo causing you to have more prefix than genuine function identifier.

And [i]then[/i] there's C++ benefits like classes and everything that goes with it. Yes, classes can become fiendishly difficult if pushed too far⁽¹⁾, but inheritance and polymorphism are nice when you have any kind of hierarchy in your program. All Actors have positions, velocities and states. But a PlayerActor also needs input; and an NpcActor has AI. And each kind of NPC has different methods for behaviour and capabilities, and different Items have different effects and so on. It's possible to do this in just C (hint: unioned-structs and function-tables and of course state engines), but whether you'd want to is another matter. And there's constructors for easier memory management, STL and references. And, yes, streams, exceptions and RTTI too if you want to kill your poor CPU (regarding GBA/DS I mean), but nobody's forcing you to use those.

So why the hell am I staying with C again? Oh right, performance!

Performance, really? I think I heard this was a valid point a long time ago, but is it still true now? To test this, I turned all tonclib's C files into C++ files, compiled again and compared the two. This is the result:

Difference in function size between C++ and C in bytes.

That graph shows the difference in the compiled function size. Positive means C++ uses more instructions. In nearly 300 functions, the only differences are minor variations in irq_set(), some of the rendering routines and TTE parsers, and neither language is the clear winner. Overall, C++ seems to do a little bit better, but the difference is marginal.

I've also run a diff between the generated assembly. There are a handful of functions where the order of instructions are different, or different registers are used, or a value is placed in a register instead of on the stack. That's about it. In other words, there is no significant difference between pure C code and its C++ equivalent. Things will probably be a little different when OOP features and exceptions enter the fray, but that's to be expected. But if you stay close to C-like C++, the only place you'll notice anything is in the name-mangling. Which you as a programmer won't notice anyway because it all happens behind the scenes.

So that strikes performance off my list, leaving only wider compatibility. I suppose that has still some merit, but considering you can turn C-code into valid C++ by changing the extension⁽²⁾, this is sound more and more like an excuse instead of a reason.