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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!ima!mirror!xanth!kyle
From: kyle@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: macro and variable name collisions
Message-ID: <738@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Mar-87 20:29:30 EST
Article-I.D.: xanth.738
Posted: Tue Mar 24 20:29:30 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Mar-87 03:46:49 EST
References: <7700002@iaoobelix.UUCP>
Organization: odu computer science
Lines: 23
Summary: i sympathize

In article <7700002@iaoobelix.UUCP>, wagner@iaoobelix.UUCP writes:
> 
> I have tried to run `screen' on a Sun. Well, the file screen.c contains a
> variable called `sun'...
> 
> You know what happened: `sun' gets replaced by `1' because we're running on a
> Sun and cpp wants to indicate this!!

I had a similar problem trying to make a sendmail header file with a

#define DBM 1

in it, live with 4.3 BSD's ndbm.h, in which DBM is struct typedef!  I had a
devil of a time trying to figure out what was going on.  It would be nice if
cpp would allow programmers to write something like

#define DBM DBM

Anyone know of a better way to avoid such collisions, besides say, prepending
an _ to macros #define'd that will only be used in later #ifdef's?

kyle jones <kyle@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
odu computer science, norfolk, va