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From: pbiron@weber.ucsd.edu (Paul Biron)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: strange behavior of the C preprocessor
Message-ID: <3866@network.ucsd.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 90 20:17:47 GMT
References: <9060@helios.TAMU.EDU) <9063@helios.TAMU.EDU>
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In article <9063@helios.TAMU.EDU>, cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Chuck
Herrick) writes:
|> In article <9060@helios.TAMU.EDU) cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Chuck
Herrick) writes:
|> )Does this appear to be a bug in the C preprocessor to you?
|> )I ran the following script (extracted from Larry Walls' Configure
|> )in patch2)
|> )cat <<'EOT' )testcpp.c
|> )#define ABC abc
|> )#define XYZ xyz
|> )ABC.XYZ
|> )EOT
|> )echo 'Maybe "'$cpp'" will work...'
|> )$cpp <testcpp.c )testcpp.out 2)&1
|> )inspection of testcpp.out revealed that the file
|> )contained
|> )	abc .xyz
|> )and NOT 
|> )	abc.xyz
|> 
|> In addition, I ran the script on a Sun SPARC 1+ which has
|> version 1.37 of the GNU C compiler/preprocessor
|> (cccp and cpp) installed along with the
|> vanilla Sun Berkeley C compiler.
|> when I ran the Sun C preprocessor (/lib/cpp) I got
 
|> -- 
|> 	Chuck Herrick				cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu

I posted something simular to this a while back, because I had
the same problem (actually I reported it as a bug to NeXT and
GNU).  The reply I received from RMS was that the behavior of
gcc (and hence cc on the NeXT) was the "proper" behavior and that
nothing was going to change.  The fact that I could produce what *I*
thought was the"proper" behavior on an HP (HP-UX 7.0), Sun Sparc
(SunOS 4.01), a VAX (BSD 4.3 tahoe), I was a little disappointed in
RMS's responce.  [Note that none of these C compilers are ANSI
compliant, except for HP's with the -Aa switch]

So, I posted to comp.lang.c to see what the concensus was there.
There answer turned out to be that ANSI compilant preprocessors
*ARE REQUIRED* to add the additional space around these tokens.
IOW, the Configure script form patch will not run with *ANY*
ANSI C.  Therefore, the "bug" is with patch, and *NOT* gcc (which
is an ANSI compliant compiler). [BTW, when I used the -Aa switch
on HP's 7.0 compiler, Configure failed]

I sent the whole conversation onto Larry Wall, and he said that in
the next distribution of patch, the problem will be fixed.

Paul Biron      pbiron@ucsd.edu        (619) 534-5758
Central University Library, Mail Code C-075-R
Social Sciences DataBase Project
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, Ca. 92093