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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Many lines from a macro?
Message-ID: <14945@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 23 Jan 91 23:15:01 GMT
References: <1991Jan22.201702.1383@quagga.ru.ac.za>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 22

In article <1991Jan22.201702.1383@quagga.ru.ac.za> cspw@quagga.ru.ac.za (Peter Wentworth) writes:
>Is there some magic that will yield three separate lines of
>macro output, instead of one?

No.

>I don't think this can ever cause problems in C, but I suspect
>there other languages that would benefit from using a general
>standardized C preprocessor as a front end.  Was there ever any
>notion among the ANSI committee that things like preprocessing
>features could be included on grounds of 'general usefulness',
>rather than 'useful only to C'?

No, in fact there is no requirement that the result of the
preprocessing phases of translation be made externally available
at all.  This permits tightly integrated C implementations that
compile appreciably faster than implementations that produce
an accessible preprocessed source text along the way.

As has been pointed out numerous times, there are general-purpose
macro preprocessors available, which you should use for any
application other than as part of the C phases of translation.