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From: evans@decvax.DEC.COM (Marc Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Perl & cpp
Keywords: perl -P option, redundancy, cpp
Message-ID: <21914@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 9 Apr 91 11:46:29 GMT
References: <5685@taux01.nsc.com>
Sender: news@shlump.nac.dec.com
Reply-To: evans@decvax.DEC.COM
Organization: Synergytics
Lines: 29

In article <5685@taux01.nsc.com>, arielf@taux01.nsc.com (Ariel Faigon) writes:
|> The -P (preprocess perl using cpp) perl option is seldom used.
|> I wonder what Larry had in mind when he introduced it.
|> Was it that "creeping featurism" ideal ;-)

Really? I use it in a large number of the perl scripts I have...

|> [...]
|> (has anyone used it ? what for ?).

Probably the most common way that I use it is:

	# include "getopts.pl"

or something simular. Even #defines are handy for macros that expand into perl
code, as oposed to using perl functions or eval. I use #define in simular cases
as where I would in regular C or C++ programming.

Yes, it would have been more useful to have a -Dfoo[=bar] and -Ufoo ability,
but there are ways to deal with that. Judicious use of #if* in an appropriate
*commonly* included file has served its purpose for my needs.

- Marc

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Marc Evans - WB1GRH - evans@decvax.DEC.COM  | Synergytics     (603)635-8876
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