Zig is everything I want C to be

https://mrcat.au/blog/zig_is_cool/

by atomlib • 2 years ago

55 23 2 years ago

mrcat.au

up2isomorphism• 2 years ago

What is the benefit of changing

int main(void) {

to:

pub fn main() !void {

Except making it looks like a "new" language and requires other people spends 15min to get to used to it？

tmtvl2• 2 years ago

There are tradeoffs:

Use of the pub keyword means you can tell whether a function is public in the module without needing to look at a separate place for listing exports (like, say, a header file). Though that itself has tradeoffs, so it's hard to say whether one or the other is better.

Use of the fn keyword makes it easy to find function definitions by grepping for it, whereas finding functions in regular C syntax needs semantic awareness.

What I don't understand is the !void at the end of the declaration, if we're meant to be returning an int, surely !int would be the expected syntax (although I would prefer returns int instead).

skavi• 2 years ago

https://ziglang.org/documentation/0.13.0/#Hello-World

frankjr2• 2 years ago

What I don't understand is the !void at the end of the declaration, if we're meant to be returning an int, surely !int would be the expected syntax (although I would prefer returns int instead).

`!void` means the function can return an error (e.g. return error.BadArgument) but doesn't produce any value itself. In the case of an error in the main function, the process will exit with 1, otherwise 0. The main function can also return a value directly (return type u8 / !u8).

TUSF• 2 years ago

In Zig, the main function can return either a u8 or void (which always returns 0) or it can return an error union !void, where if you allow an error to bubble up to main, it'll print an error trace and return 1.

znpy2• 2 years ago

Use of the fn keyword makes it easy to find function definitions by grepping for it, whereas finding functions in regular C syntax needs semantic awareness.

does it matter though, in 2024 and beyond?

we've got clangd and lsp, grepping for functions is dumb, whether you're grepping C or grepping Zig.

jonathrg• 2 years ago

C's function declaration syntax is pretty weird and makes the language harder to parse. Most languages have a function keyword.

elteto• 2 years ago

15 minutes… the horror.

d_tr• 2 years ago

Probably not much, but this is not the only change the language brings.

ksp-atlas• 2 years ago

As someone who wrote C for my hobby projects, I've switched to Zig and enjoy it more as it feels I can express my intention more clearly

c2xlZXB5Cg1• 2 years ago

I'd go with for loop syntax:

    for (string, 0..) |character, index| {
        _ = character;
        _ = index;
    }

audunw• 2 years ago

If you have a lot of experience with C, and take just a glance at the basics of Zig, I think you’ll understand why each of those changes were made. C doesn’t have very good syntax. Nether for compiler (correctly interpreting the code requires a lot of context), nor code editor, nor for humans.

If you have experience with some modern languages, you’ll definitely understand the syntax. Zig is close to a style of syntax that many newer languages seem to have settled on, and there are good reasons why that style has become prefer.

Why make a new language if you’re not going to make some improvements over the old? Seems like a very weird complaint to me.

jhhh• 2 years ago

Are you saying you don't like isomorphisms?

lowbloodsugar• 2 years ago

What's the Zag gonna be?

jf• 2 years ago

A Smalltalk VM: https://github.com/Zag-Research/Zag-Smalltalk

WorldPeas• 2 years ago

I like vlang.io better...

kristianp2• 2 years ago

What's the performance like compared to C? Is it faster to compile and almost as fast programs?

kristianp2• 2 years ago

Apparently unsafe zig can be faster, but only due to unsafe rust being difficult to write in the style of pointers: https://zackoverflow.dev/writing/unsafe-rust-vs-zig/

Zig is everything I want C to be

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