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I am currently joining a new project in C++, but I am only acquainted with C. I will look to learn the STL and BOOST, but in the meantime, I foresee myself only programming in the C subset of C++.
My question is, when will just using the C subset of C++ and compiling with the C++ compiler be notably worse than just compiling with a C compiler?
I ask mostly in performance (things like size of executable are not a concern, as we are not working in embedded systems).
I ask mostly in performance
I would say that this is the wrong metric to use. Many C++ compilers share their codebase with C compilers. That is, if a given block of code is valid C and valid C++ (with the same semantics in both languages), the object code produced by the C compiler is likely to be comparable to – if not the same as – that produced by the C++ compiler (ignoring C++ name mangling).
A better metric for "bad" is robustness. The differences between C and C++ are more than syntax. C++ is object-oriented, using a different mindset than C. Given a piece of code that happens to be valid in both languages, the style will often reveal which language it was written as. Thanks to object-orientation, C++ code promotes more robust practices than exist in C (whereas C has a better focus on raw speed). Perhaps the simplest such practice to grasp is RAII.
So the question of "bad" should not focus on the object code, but on the source code. What will your colleagues on this project think of your coding style? You might be better served by learning C++ philosophy before worrying about learning all of the Boost and STL APIs. (There is overlap in what you would learn, so the distinction is not cut-and-dried. Please allow me this bit of exaggeration to make a point.)
Using the common subset of C and C++ is good and in fact necessary, when writing a header that is designed to be usable from both C and C++.
Limiting oneself to C conforming code when writing a C++ source file, and correspondingly limiting oneself to C++ conforming code when writing C source file is unnecessary and leads to code that would be considered poor quality by majority of programmers.
Think of C++ as an extension of C to facilitate object-orientated programming.
C++ contains higher-level features (virtual functions, shared_ptrs, dynamic casts etc) designed to make programming easier, but with the tradeoff of some performance overhead.
These C++ features are built on top of C fundamentals (pointers, malloc etc). So you could avoid virtual functions by using C pointers to functions, but you increase the chance of bugs and readability and maintainability decrease.
So, your C code shouldn't be slower than C++ (unless you do something silly). However, your C++ could be slower until you learn how the C++ features are implemented "under the hood".
While developing a new product, we decided to go for a mix of C++ and C#, haven been told that bridging them to allow the C# code to call the C++ code would be easy (spoiler, it's not).
We're pretty experienced C++ programmers and not at all C# programmers so we pretty much just had to believe what we've read. A few attempts to call C and Objective-C was promising and we even found a few articles that showed how to make an unmanaged C++ class available in C# -- or at least we thought. The C++ code in the articles, wasn't C++, but instead the horrible monster C++/CLI that Microsoft seems to think is C++. Since we're doing the C# stuff to get some bits "for free" in macOS and Windows, C++/CLI isn't an option either :-(.
Anyway, plenty of people have claimed that it's easy to call C++ code from some specific programming language, but so far, I haven't seen a single one that will allow me to do so (I haven't been paying too much attention to this, so please provide me with an obvious example). C++ invariably always means C with no C++ stuff at all; no namespaces, classes, no stl, lambdas or anything. Just plain dumb C.
So, are there any languages, besides C++(/CLI) that will allow me to do the following:
Create an instance of a class, using a C++ constructor, and dispatch it with a C++ destructor.
Call member functions on an object ( foo f; f.foo();) with a C++ class.
Use std::vector, std::find_if, std::string and other stuff from the stl. Complete coverage of the stl is not required.
Use overloaded functions (i.e. f(), f(int), f(std::string))
Use overloaded operators (foo operator + (foo, foo))
Use C++11, C++14 and/or C++17 features.
Use RAII (rather important IMHO).
Use namespaces.
No. There is no such language.
Unless you count Objective-C++. But that falls pretty much in the same bucket as C++/CLI, in being C++ with some extensions. And C++/CX is another such beast.
There are some interop tools that can work with C++ classes (SWIG for example), but I have never heard of a tool that is capable of instantiating C++ templates (like vector or find_if) on demand.
What languages will call C++ with no explicit bridging?
The short answer to this question is: NONE
Remember that a programming language is a specification written in some technical report, usually in English. For examples, read n1570 (the spec of C11) or R5RS (the spec of Scheme). For C++, see n3337.
Actually, you are interested in implementations, e.g. in compilers and interpreters for your programming languages. These implementations are practically software. And then the answer might become: it depends (notably on the ABI used & targetted by your compiler and system).
See for examples this list of ABIs for Linux.
plenty of people have claimed that it's easy to call C++ code from some specific programming language,
The C calling conventions are quite common, and it might help to declare every C++ function callable from outside as extern "C". But there is no silver bullet, and details matter a lot.
So, are there any languages, besides C++(/CLI) that will allow me to do the following:
list of C++ features skipped
Probably not.
You probably need at least to understand more about memory management approaches. I recommend understanding more about garbage collection, e.g. by reading the GC handbook (at least for underlying concepts & terminology). Learn more about foreign function interfaces (in some cases, the libffi might help) and language bindings.
You might also consider generating some of the C++ or C glue code, maybe with SWIG (or write your own C++ glue code generator).
On operating systems providing dynamic linking capable of loading plugins at runtime (e.g. Linux with dlopen(3)/dlsym(3); but other OSes often have similar facilities) you could even consider generating some C or C++ glue code at runtime in some temporary file, compile it as a temporary plugin, and dynamically loading that plugin. You could also consider JIT-compiling libraries like GCCJIT or LLVM (or libjit).
I recommend reading SICP, the Dragon Book, and probably Lisp In Small Pieces. Of course, learn something about OSes, e.g. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. Reading about Linkers and Loaders could also help.
As an excellent example of cleverly gluing C++, look into CLASP and see this video.
But whatever approach you take, you'll need a lot of work (years, not weeks).
C++ as a language does not have a defined ABI (Application Binary Interface) - which basically means that there is no universal standard of what a C++ class/function call/template would look like in binary form on any given platform, or across platforms.
What that means is that there is no universal way to call C++ code from other languages, on different platforms, or even across compilers on the same platform. It also means that the people who are telling you "it's easy to call C++ code from XYZ language" are mostly incorrect (or at least incredibly incomplete).
Where there are interfaces it's either because the provider of the interface controls the ABI (C++/CLI with .NET), or because there is a translation layer from C++ to something like the C calling convention (Boost::python).
Some work has been done towards attempting to define an ABI per-platform (http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2014/n4028.pdf), but as far as I'm aware it has not yet been accepted into C++17.
You can look into using C++ interpreter, which allows for the fine-grained control you ask for. But I don't know of any that "just works", see also:
Have you used any of the C++ interpreters (not compilers)?
Is it possible to write the complete C++ standard library (including STL of course, but self-contained, only internal dependencies) using only C++? I would imagine containers and <cstdlib> functionality would be doable in terms of chars, bitshifts, and for loops and other byte fancy things, but stuff like exceptions and perhaps std::cout and std::cin seem hard to me without a dependency to begin with. Let's say there is a set of OS functions available, that are completely implemented in assembly (to avoid any C contamination).
I'm assuming the compiler understands everything from classes and virtual functions to templates and function overloading, these are language level things and have no place in a library IMHO.
If this has been asked before or is a trivially stupid question, please forgive me. I'm not trying to start a C<->C++ war here, just trying to figure out the limitations of implementing a beast such as the Standard library...
Thanks!
Since pretty much anything written in C can be rewritten fairly easily in C++, you're asking whether assembly code is needed, and the answer is generally no.
Unless we're talking about embedded programming, operating systems have all the necessary file and I/O functionality available through system calls, usually (nowadays) in C format. The library needs to call them, likely through extern "C"{ ... } declarations. The operating system functions are not considered part of the C++ library, and typically aren't exact matches to anything defined in the C++ Standard.
To implement a C++ standard library, you would need to be familiar with the language itself, know the OS calls you're going to use, and have the algorithms you're going to use. At that point, it's a relatively straightforward matter of writing the software.
First thing, it doesn't matter if it's C, C++, or D. Any compilable programming language at the end gives you (mostly) the same assembly object file.
Second thing, STL is written in C++, you cannot write C++ library in C or any other language (well, you can but I assume, that we're talking on reasonable solutions). You cannot implement STL containers in C, because the're strongly use templates.
GCC generate really nice output in asm for exceptions now. I recommend to read about C++ ABI (if you're interested in it).
C++ compiler understands all C++ specific features really nice nowadays. Thanks to really advanced code analysis and optimizations, it's able to produce fast executables (see first paragraph).
I hope that I've at least partly answered your question.
The only piece of C++ that needs assembly is the exception handling. I suppose that it might be doable in C++ if there exist libraries to handle the necessary register and stack management.
Of course, those libraries would then include assembly. There just isn't any other way to do direct register management.
The STL is very heavily reliant on #includeed header files. Those pretty much have to be C++.
Anything that isn't in one of those header files though could in theory be implemented in C, Ada, Assembly, or the other systems-programming language of your choice. However, you'd probably have to be maintaining two interfaces if you don't make at least the top layer C++.
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Although people seem to like to complain about C++, I haven't been able to find much evidence as to why you would want to choose C over C++. C doesn't seem to get nearly as much flak and if C++ has all these problems why can't you just restrict yourself to the C subset? What are your thoughts/experience?
Joel's answer is good for reasons you might have to use C, though there are a few others:
You must meet industry guidelines, which are easier to prove and test for in C
You have tools to work with C, but not C++ (think not just about the compiler, but all the support tools, coverage, analysis, etc)
Your target developers are C gurus
You're writing drivers, kernels, or other low-level code
You know the C++ compiler isn't good at optimizing the kind of code you need to write
Your app not only doesn't lend itself to be object-oriented but would be harder to write in that form
In some cases, though, you might want to use C rather than C++:
You want the performance of assembler without the trouble of coding in assembler (C++ is, in theory, capable of 'perfect' performance, but the compilers aren't as good at seeing optimizations a good C programmer will see)
The software you're writing is trivial, or nearly so - whip out the tiny C compiler, write a few lines of code, compile and you're all set - no need to open a huge editor with helpers, no need to write practically empty and useless classes, deal with namespaces, etc. You can do nearly the same thing with a C++ compiler and simply use the C subset, but the C++ compiler is slower, even for tiny programs.
You need extreme performance or small code size and know the C++ compiler will actually make it harder to accomplish due to the size and performance of the libraries.
You contend that you could just use the C subset and compile with a C++ compiler, but you'll find that if you do that you'll get slightly different results depending on the compiler.
Regardless, if you're doing that, you're using C. Is your question really "Why don't C programmers use C++ compilers?" If it is, then you either don't understand the language differences, or you don't understand the compiler theory.
I like minimalism & simplicity.
Because they already know C
Because they're building an embedded app for a platform that only has a C compiler
Because they're maintaining legacy software written in C
You're writing something on the level of an operating system, a relational database engine, or a retail 3D video game engine.
Fears of performance or bloat are not good reason to forgo C++. Every language has its potential pitfalls and trade offs - good programmers learn about these and where necessary develop coping strategies, poor programmers will fall foul and blame the language.
Interpreted Python is in many ways considered to be a "slow" language, but for non-trivial tasks a skilled Python programmer can easily produce code that executes faster than that of an inexperienced C developer.
In my industry, video games, we write high performance code in C++ by avoiding things such as RTTI, exceptions, or virtual-functions in inner loops. These can be extremely useful but have performance or bloat problems that it's desirable to avoid. If we were to go a step further and switch entirely to C we would gain little and lose the most useful constructs of C++.
The biggest practical reason for preferring C is that support is more widespread than C++. There are many platforms, particularly embedded ones, that do not even have C++ compilers.
There is also the matter of compatibility for vendors. While C has a stable and well-defined ABI (Application Binary Interface) C++ does not. The ABI in C++ is more complicated due to such things as vtables and constructurs/destructors so is implemented differently with every vendor, and even versions of a vendors toolchain.
In real-terms this means you cannot take a library generated by one compiler and link it with code or a library from another which creates a nightmare for distributed projects or middleware providers of binary libraries.
I take the other view: why use C++ instead of C?
The book The C Programming Language (aka: K&R) tells you clearly how to do everything the language can do in under 300 pages. It's a masterpiece of minimalism. No C++ book even comes close.
The obvious counterargument is that the same could be said of most, if not all, modern languages -- they also can't tell you how to do everything in only a few hundred pages. True. So why use C++ instead? Feature richness? Power? If you need something more feature rich or powerful then go with C#, Objective C, Java, or something else like that. Why burden yourself with the complexities of C++? If you need the degree of control C++ grants then I argue to use C. C can do anything and can do it well.
I choose to write in C because I enjoy working with a small, tight language. I like having access to a standard which can be read in a reasonable amount of time (for me -- I'm a very slow reader). Moreover, I use it to write software for embedded systems for which few desirable C++ compilers exist (like some PIC micro-controllers).
In addition to several other points mentioned already:
Less surprise
that is, it is much easier to see what a piece of code will do do exactly . In C++ you need to approach guru level to be able to know exactly what code the compiler generates (try a combination of templates, multiple inheritance, auto generated constructors, virtual functions and mix in a bit of namespace magic and argument dependent lookup).
In many cases this magic is nice, but for example in real-time systems it can really screw up your day.
I'm used to use C++ for my projects. Then I got a job where plain C is used (a 20 year old evolving codebase of an AV software with poor documentation...).
The 3 things I like in C are:
Nothing is implicit: you see what your program exactly does or not does. This makes debugging easier.
The lack of namespaces and overloads can be an advantage: if you want to know where a certain function is called, just grep through the source code directory and it will tell you. No other special tools needed.
I rediscovered the power of the function pointers. Basically they allow you to do all polymorphic stuff you do in C++, but they are even more flexible.
Linus' answer to your question is "Because C++ is a horrible language"
His evidence is anecdotal at best, but he has a point..
Being more of a low level language, you would prefer it to C++..C++ is C with added libraries and compiler support for extra features (both languages have features the other language doesn't, and implement things differently), but if you have the time and experience with C, you can benefit from extra added low level related powers...[Edited](because you get used to doing more work manually rather than benefit from some powers coming from the language/compiler itself)
Adding links:
Why C++ for embedded
Why are you still using C? PDF
I would google for this.. because there are plenty of commentaries on the web already
Because they're writing a plugin and C++ has no standard ABI.
Long compile times can be annoying. With C++ you can have very long compile times (which means, of course, more time for Stack Overflow!).
If you want your code to be understood by virtually any programmer write in C.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned libraries. Lots of languages can link against C libs and call C functions (including C++ with extern "C"). C++ is pretty much the only thing that can use a C++ lib (defined as 'a lib that uses features in C++ that are not in C [such as overloaded functions, virtual methods, overloaded operators, ...], and does not export everything through C compatible interfaces via extern "C"').
Because they want to use features in C99 that don't have equivalents in C++.
However, there aren't as many C99 features that are useful to C++ as people think at first glance. Variable-length arrays? C++ has std::vectors. Support for complex/imaginary numbers? C++ has a templated complex type. Type-generic math functions? C++ overloaded the standard math functions, causing the same result.
Named initializers? Not in C++, but there's a workaround:
struct My_class_params {
int i;
long j;
std::string name;
My_class_params& set_i(int ii)
{
i = ii;
return *this;
}
My_class_params& set_j(long jj)
{
j = jj;
return *this;
}
template <typename STRING>
My_class_params& set_name(STRING&& n)
{
name = std::forward<STRING>(n);
return *this;
}
My_class_params()
{
// set defaults
}
};
class My_class {
My_class_params params;
public:
My_class(const My_class_params& p) : params(p) { }
...
};
This allows you to write things like:
My_class mc(My_class_params().set_i(5).set_name("Me"));
This is pretty shallow but as a busy student I chose C because I thought C++ would take too long to learn. Many professors at my university won't accept assignments in Python and I needed to pick up something quickly.
Because for many programming tasks C is simpler, and good enough. When I'm programming lightweight utilities especially, I can feel like C++ wants me to build in an elegant supersructure for its own sake, rather than simply write the code.
OTOH, for more complex projects, the elegance provides more good solid structural rigor than would naturally flow out of my keyboard.
Most of the significant features of c++ somehow involve classes or templates. These are wonderful features except for the way the compiler transforms these into object code. Most compilers use name mangling, and the ones that don't do something at least as messy.
If your system lives on its own, as is the case with many applications, then C++ is a fine choice.
If your system needs to interact with software not neccesarily written in C++ (most frequently in assembler, or Fortran Libraries) then you are in a tight spot. To interact with those kinds of cases, you'll need to disable name mangling for those symbols. this is usually done by declaring those objects extern "C", but then they can't be templates, overloaded functions, or classes. If those are likely to be your applications API, then you'll have to wrap them with helper functions, and keep those functions in sync with the actual implementations.
And in reality, the C++ language provides a standard syntax for features that can be easily implemented in pure C.
In short, the overhead of interoperable C++ is too high for most folks to justify.
Oh my, C vs C++, a great way to start a flame war. :)
I think C is better for driver and embedded code.
C++ has some great features that C doesn't have, but many of the object oriented features of C++ can cause monumental coding messes when people write code with non-obvious side-effects that occur behinds the scenes. Crazy code can be hidden in constructors, destructors, virtual functions, ... The beauty of C code is the language does nothing non-obvious behind your back, thus you can read the code and not have to look up at every constructor and destructor and so on. A lot of the problem is bad coding practices by SOME people.
My perfect language would be a combination of C99 plus a minimal subset of safer C++ capabilities that adds ZERO (or near zero) compiler overhead to the binary output. Perfect additions would be class encapsulation and naming concepts of data and functions.
One remark about "just use the subset of C++ you want to use": the problem with this idea is that it has a cost to enforce that everybody in the project uses the same subset. My own opinion is that those costs are quite high for loosely coupled projects (e.g. open source ones), and also that C++ totally failed at being a better C, in the sense that you cannot use C++ wherever you used C.
I haven't been able to find much evidence as to why you would want to choose C over C++.
You can hardly call what I'm about to say evidence; it's just my opinion.
People like C because it fits nicely inside the mind of the prgrammer.
There are many complex rules of C++ [when do you need virtual destructors, when can you call virtual methods in a constructor, how does overloading and overriding interact, ...], and to master them all takes a lot of effort. Also, between references, operator overloading and function overloading, understanding a piece of code can require you to understand other code that may or may not be easy to find.
A different question in why organizations would prefer C over C++. I don't know that, I'm just a people ;-)
In the defense of C++, it does bring valuable features to the table; the one I value most is probably parametric('ish) polymorphism, though: operations and types that takes one or more types as arguments.
I would say that C gives you better control over optimization and efficiency than C++ and hence would be useful in situations where memory and other resources are limited and every optimization helps. It also has a smaller footprint of course.
There's also the approach some shops take of using some of C++'s features in a C-like way, but avoiding ones that are objectionable. For example, using classes and class methods and function overloading (which are usually easy for even C diehards to cope with), but not the STL, stream operators, and Boost (which are harder to learn and can have bad memory characteristics).
Because you're writing for a system where resources are tight (such as an embedded system, or some kind real bare metal code like a kernel) and you want as little overhead as possible.
There's a reason why most embedded systems don't have a C++ compiler - it's not that people don't want one, it's that cramming C++ code into that small a space is task that approaches impossible.
Until some years ago the existing C++ compilers were missing important features, or the support was poor and the supported features vary wildly among them, and so it was hard to write portable applications.
Because of the no standard naming of symbols it is difficult for other languages/applications to support C++ classes directly.
What C needed was a better preprocessor.
cfront was one and thus born c++
I'ld use C, where the 'c++ as preprocessor' would not be okay.
I'm pretty sure, at the bottom of any well written c++ library/framework/toolkit,
you would find dirty-old-c ( or static casts, which is same )
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I am taking a class in C++ programming and the professor told us that there is no need to learn C because C++ contains everything in C plus object-oriented features. However, some others have told me that this is not necessarily true. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Overview:
It is almost true that C++ is a superset of C, and your professor is correct in that there is no need to learn C separately.
C++ adds the whole object oriented aspect, generic programming aspect, as well as having less strict rules (like variables needing to be declared at the top of each function). C++ does change the definition of some terms in C such as structs, although still in a superset way.
Examples of why it is not a strict superset:
This Wikipedia article has a couple good examples of such a differences:
One commonly encountered difference is
that C allows implicit conversion from
void* to other pointer types, but C++
does not. So, the following is valid C
code:
int *i = malloc(sizeof(int) * 5);
... but to make it work in both C and
C++ one would need to use an explicit
cast:
int *i = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int) * 5)
Another common portability issue is
that C++ defines many new keywords,
such as new and class, that may be
used as identifiers (e.g. variable
names) in a C program.
This wikipedia article has further differences as well:
C++ compilers prohibit goto from crossing an initialization, as in the following C99 code:
void fn(void)
{
goto flack;
int i = 1;
flack:
;
}
What should you learn first?
You should learn C++ first, not because learning C first will hurt you, not because you will have to unlearn anything (you won't), but because there is no benefit in learning C first. You will eventually learn just about everything about C anyway because it is more or less contained in C++.
While it's true that C++ was designed to maintain a large degree of compatibility with C and a subset of what you learn in C++ will apply to C the mindset is completely different. Programming C++ with Boost or STL is a very different experience than programming in C.
There was a term of art called using C++ as a better C. This meant using some C++ language features and tools to make C programming easier (e.g., declaring the index variable of a for loop within the for statement). But now, modern C++ development seems very different from C other than a great deal of the syntax and in those cases the C legacy often seems to be a burden rather than a benefit.
It might be true that you don't need to learn the syntax of C if you know the syntax of C++ but you cetainly do need to learn of how coding practices are different in C than in C++.
So your professor wasn't 100% right.
In C you don't have the classes to arrange your code into logical modules and you don't have C++ polymorphism. Yet you still need to achieve these goals somehow.
although the syntax of C is to some extent a subset of C++, programming in C is not a subset of programming in C++. it is completely different.
Yes and no.
As others have already answered, the language C++ is a superset of the language C, with some small exceptions, for example that sizeof('x') gives a different value.
But what I don't think has been very clearly stated is that when it comes to the use of these two languages, C++ is not a superset, but rather different. C++ contains new (it can be discussed if they are better) ways of doing the basic things, such as writing to the screen. The old C ways are still there, but you generally use the new ways. This means that a simple "hello world" program looks different in C and in C++. So it is not really true that the simple things are the same in C and C++, and then you just add more advanced stuff, such as support for object-oriented programming, in C++.
So if you have learnt C++, you will need to re-learn quite a lot before you can program in C. (Well, it is possible to teach C++ as an extension to C, still using printf and malloc instead of iostreams and new, and then adding classes and other C++ things, but that way of using C++ is generally frowned upon.)
No C++ isn't really a superset of C. You can check this article for a more extensive list of the differences if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_of_C_and_C%2B%2B
Not entirely true.
The biggest "gotcha" is typing -- C++ is much more strongly typed than C is, and the preferred methods for solving this in C++ are simply not available in C. Namely, you can silently cast between types in C (particularly pointer types), but not in C++. And C++ highly recommends using the static_cast/reinterpret_cast/const_cast methods for resolving these issues.
More importantly, if you learn C++ syntax and mannerisms, you'll probably find it difficult to deal with C (some may say this is good; and I prefer C++ myself, but sometimes it just isn't an option, or you have to deal with legacy code that's in C and not C++). Again, the most likely issues you'll encounter are dealing with pointers (particularly char*'s and general array usage; in C++ using std::string and std::vector or other collections is simply better).
It's certainly possible to learn C++, and then learn the differences between C and C++ and be capable of programming in both. But the differences are far more than just skin deep.
It is true that for most purposes, C++ contains everything that C does. Language lawyers will be quick to point out that there are some very special edge cases that are valid C but not valid C++.
One such example might be the C declaration
int virtual;
which declares an integer named "virtual". Since "virtual" is a keyword in C++, this is not valid C++.
There is a large common core of C (especially C89) and C++, but there are most certainly areas of difference between C and C++. Obviously, C++ has all the object-oriented features, plus the generic programming, plus exceptions, plus namespaces that C does not. However, there are also features of C that are not in C++, such as support for the (close to archaic) non-prototype notation for declaring and defining functions. In particular, the meaning of the following function declaration is different in C and C++:
extern void function();
In C++, that is a function that returns no value and takes no parameters (and, therefore, is called solely for its side-effects, whatever they are). In C, that is a function which returns no value but for which there is no information about the argument list. C still does not require a declaration in scope before a function is called (in general; you must have a declaration in scope if the function takes a variable list of arguments, so it is critical to #include <stdio.h> before using printf(), etc).
There are also differences:
sizeof('c')
In C++, the answer is 1; in C, the answer is normally 4 (32-bit systems with 8-bit characters) or even 8 (64-bit systems with 64-bit int).
In general, you can write code that will compile under both C and C++ compilers without much difficulty - the majority of my code does that all the time. The exceptions are either a result of carelessness on my part, or because I've consciously exploited the good features of C99 that are not in C++ 98, such as designated initializers, or long long.
Stroustrup himself advices against learning C first. But then again, he (and many others of his generation) managed to become a C++ guru starting from C.
I personally would disagree with your professor.
Generally speaking, C++ is based on C and in that "sense" contains it and extends it.
However, since traditionally people learned C and only then the extensions of C++, your professor's statement is incorrect since to use C++ correctly you would need to master the C origins. It is possible that when teaching you something, your professor or textbook will not specifically mention what came from which language.
In addition, it is important to understand that despite the similarities, not every C program runs in the same way under C++. For example, C structs are interpreted differently (as classes with everything public) by the C++ compiler.
When I teach, I teach the C core first, and then go to C++.
If any of the students in the class intend to become embedded software engineers, then they may have no choice but to program in C (see this question, and this one, among others).
Of course, having learnt C++, it may be less of a transition for them than starting from scratch - but it still makes your professor's statement untrue!