Apple Blocks added to C++?

[Michel Fortin]

On 2009-09-02 00:27:46 -0400, S. <S at S.com> said:

> Been awhile since I posted.
> 
> I was wondering what other people thought about this addition to C++ by 
> Apple.   Heh.
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/10

I don't find the syntax that ugly. And I'd say the feature is at its 
best when used with Grand Central Dispatch. As page 13 of this same 
review says, it enables developer to transform synchronous operations 
such as this:

  NSDictionary *stats = [myDoc analyze];
  [myModel setDict:stats];
  [myStatsView setNeedsDisplay:YES];
  [stats release];

into asynchrnous with minimal effort:

  dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(0, 0), ^{
    NSDictionary *stats = [myDoc analyze];
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
      [myModel setDict:stats];
      [myStatsView setNeedsDisplay:YES];
      [stats release];
    });
  });

Without it, you'd have to create a bunch of different functions, 
probably accompanied by a context struct, to make this work, 
complexifying the conde and making it harder to follow. It's just 
syntaxic sugar when you think about it, but it's that syntaxic sugar 
that makes it practical to express operations in a way they can run 
asynchrnously.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/