I just wonder why Linux is written in C and not in C++. Is there any logical reasoning for this or its just the popularity of C which made the selectio of the language?

i guess it makes sense because unix is c, and c is probably the only practical language above assembly with which to program an operating system. though you still need some assembly in the kernel.
i'm not aware of any practical general purpose kernel that is written in any thing other than c.
also i think c++ is too dirty, or not as clean as c.

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I would think it's mostly a matter of timing. If you think about it, C++ first showed on the radar screen in 1985. I am unsure when Torvalds began linux development, but at least parts surfaced in 1991. It is quite likely that he wasn't familiar with C++, or at least not enough to use it as well as the well-established C.

Cleaner? I don't know, I guess it depends what you're used to. I prefer Strings to char* but that is just a personal preference.

And portability is a very important reason, too.

First link from a google search:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/2067?PHPS...7ef71a854302f2

hear hear!

he he he i told you c++ was dirty. personally, i think things like the dynamic/static/const... casts are dirty.
and you know if you allocate objects dynamically (using new), then you have to call delete on them to invoke the destructor. so what if you forget to delete -> memory leak, see? and then to "solve" that problem, they introduced the --what is it? i don't remember what they're called anymore-- safe pointer or something. and the safe pointers are instantiated statically, so the destructor is invoked automatically when the safe pointer goes out of scope. but then there's this issue of "the owner" of the memory that the safe pointer points to. blah blah blah. it's a mess.

not to mention 'friends'.
what's that all about?

sorry. i'm lost. what do you mean? what are you referring to?

those horrible 'friend' functions
where you can access private data in classes or
something.
yukky
A real botch job.

I admire Linus Torvalds and George Lucas a lot (what? How could I put both in the same sentence... I will explain ). But I just don't know... sometimes they are a bit full of crap: "I've tried to program Linux with C++" and "I've planned Jar Jar Binks in the 70's", sounds suspicious.

I for one, believe that a kernel written in C++ would be still fast and easier to maintain. And just because it's C++, it does not stops you for using anything for C...

Again, I admire Linus for creating Linus (even though, the current kernel is only 2% written by him) and George Lucas for creating a huge, deep world as Star Wars (even though, his new movies with computer graphics looks horrible) but when they are talking things from the past like this, finding excuses for that... smells like Bantha podoo for me...

I can tell you from experience that C++ is a lot bloatier than an application that does the same thing in C.

It's not a question of whether or not C++ is fast. It's a question of whether or not C++ is faster than C, and if it's worth the trouble to rewrite the entire kernel (which means introducing new bugs, etc.) Linus has stated before that if they switch to a C++ kernel that they'd do it all or nothing. They wouldn't start writing little bits at a time in C++ and tie it into other C code.

Thank you all for your valuable responses and information. I think there is no strict reason why C++ is not used, but the time as C was very popular and stable at the time when Linux was developed.
Thanks all.

And still is !