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From: guido@piring.cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: A question of style
Keywords: define const enum
Message-ID: <8300@boring.cwi.nl>
Date: 1 Aug 89 07:44:02 GMT
References: <1148@hsfmsh.UUCP>
Sender: news@cwi.nl
Lines: 26

Stroustrup, in his book, says that you shouldn't be using preprocessor
features where the language has corresponding features.  This rules out
using #define for simple constants.

(My own question: would this hold for #ifdef'ed code, too?  I could do
something like

	const debug = ...;
		.
		.
		.
	foo()
	{
		if (debug)
			printf("foo called\n");
		...
	}

but I'm a bit worried about dumb (but otherwise OK) compilers that leave
the code in; e.g., for some C compilers, with -O, the code disappears
but the strings remain in the data segment.)

--
Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam
guido@cwi.nl or mcvax!guido or guido%cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net
"You're so *digital*, girl!" -- Neneh Cherry