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2330 :: Nim is superset of C?!

• jangko (orginal) [2016-06-21T09:04:56+02:00] view original

  is Nim a superset of C?

  short answer: no

  Nim compiles to Javascript and PHP too, and they don't have superset-subset relationship with Nim.

  does Nim take all C powers?

  No. For example: there is nothing in Nim like forward declaration of struct in C.

  • this can be solved in Nim using one big type section, which is ugly if you have many object definitions in that section, and each of them have many fields with complex type such as function pointer
  • this can be solved elegantly if Nim also support circular import, which is not supported yet
  • although Nim do have super-metaprogramming-power compared to C, but that cannot solve this missing object forward declaration.
  • I believe there are others area which can be done in C but cannot be done in Nim, which fortunately are hard to find

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• gokr (orginal) [2016-06-21T10:03:06+02:00] view original

  When using the term "superset" one typically means that you can even compile a program in the subset language using the superset compiler (like say C++ for C or such).

  So no, Nim is a completely different language than C - it just happens to use C as its primary compilation target. You can similarly say "Since C compiles to assembler, is C a superset of assembler?". No, there is no such conclusion to be made just by looking at what a compiler targets. Although yes, some compilers that extend a language may work that way.

  So jangko is correct, but... I just want to stress the fact that Nim is an immensely more powerful and advanced language than C. IMHO C could only be preferred to Nim in a realtime/embedded situation where memory needs careful manual management, but... very few of us are doing that kind of programming. Rust programmers typically disagree with that statement though. ;)

  Just my 2c.

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