Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!cornell!calvin!richard
From: richard@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU (Richard Brittain)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C's Limited Macro Capabilities
Summary: Complex macros also tend to break source code analysis tools
Message-ID: <3311@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 4 Dec 89 03:42:14 GMT
References: <69517@psuecl.bitnet> <11250@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu. (Richard Brittain)
Organization: Cornell Space Plasma Physics Group
Lines: 21

In article <11250@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser) writes:
>
>A simple macro processor, like the one we have, is a Good Thing.
>I am not so sure that a more powerful macro processor along the
>same lines would be. For one thing, the syntax of macro languages
>is nasty, and not conducive to good programming practice, and when one
>writes complex macros, in effect one is making use of a meta-programming
>language. So my gut reaction to proposals for non-trivial extensions to
>cpp is generally one of the following, depending on the case at hand:
..... examples deleted

Another problem with using complex macros, particularly if they affect function
declarations or variable/array declarations, is that most source code analysis
tools, pretty printers etc. will break.  Running them on the output of cpp
doesn't cut it if part of the output involves line numbers into the source file.


Richard Brittain,                   School of Elect. Eng.,  Upson Hall   
                                    Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
ARPA: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu	
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