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On Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:59:46 +1000, moo wrote:

> I was under the impression it was a high level language.

It's higher-level than machine code, assembly and C, but lower-level than
pretty much anything else in common use today.



--
[ T H I S S P A C E I S F O R R E N T ]
Troppo poca cultura ci rende ignoranti, troppa ci rende folli.
-- fathermckenzie di it.cultura.linguistica.italiano
<http://xkcd.com/397/>

On Fri, 2012-09-07, Nick Keighley wrote:
....
>> So why would C++ allow that be coded? Has to be a reason.
>
> C++ (and its ancestor, C) implicitly assumes the programmer knows what
> he is doing. If you want to stuff bits into arbitary memory locations
> then C++ will allow you to do this (or can be made to on many
> implementations). Why would you do this? Memory mapped hardware,
> access to special memory (EEPROM, DMA).

Put differently, C++ was designed to be useful for (among other
things) low-level systems programming. "Leave no room for another
lower-level language" was how Stroustrup put it, I think.

> If you don't know what you are doing use Java or something.

Or use C++ on a modern computer with memory protection provided by the
OS and hardware ...

I suspect the OP misunderstood whatever material he was reading,
because corrupting other processes' memory is something very few
programmers have to worry about, no matter what language they use.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

moo <> wrote:
> If you were to designate a specific memory address for a variable and the
> compiled program was run on a system with that address in use already what would happen?

to answer the question, the value at the address would be overwritten with
the new value.
i don't know what use this is in modern os's, if it is even possible, but
doing this on embedded boards was normal.
specifically in my case, a motorola 68hc11 evb with small-c.

bare metal programming in c. those were the days.