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From: diomidis@ecrcvax.UUCP (Diomidis Spinellis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: quotes inside #if 0
Summary: Pcc doesn't like unterminated comments inside #if 0
Keywords: ANSI, comments
Message-ID: <766@ecrcvax.UUCP>
Date: 6 Sep 89 07:41:27 GMT
References: <2014@munnari.oz.au> <14512@haddock.ima.isc.com> <2023@munnari.oz.au>
Reply-To: diomidis@ecrcvax.UUCP (Diomidis Spinellis)
Organization: ECRC, Munich 81, West Germany
Lines: 31

In article <2023@munnari.oz.au> ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <2014@munnari.oz.au> ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes:
>>	#if 0 ... [English text and C examples] ... #endif
>>The compiler sees words like "don't" in the English text and snarls that
>>these are unterminated character constants.  This used to be perfectly
>>good C...
[...]
>It is not at all coincidental.  There was never any suggestion in any book
>that #if 0-ed code had to have balanced single quotes, and the only C
>compiler I've ever come across (I've used about a dozen) that complains
>about it is the only one I've used that tries to be ANSI-compliant.

ecrcvax% cat t.c
#if 0
#funny_text
/*
#endif
ecrcvax% /bin/cc -c t.c
t.c: 2: undefined control
t.c: 5: unterminated comment

Vanila pcc complains about unbalanced comments and undefined preprocessor
controls inside #if 0 blocks.  Commenting out arbitrary text with #if 0 is
not a safe practice for most compilers (both ANSI and classic C).

Diomidis
-- 
Diomidis Spinellis          European Computer-Industry Research Centre (ECRC)
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