Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Of Standards and Inventions: A Cautionary Tale
Message-ID: <7637@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 9 Apr 88 22:53:40 GMT
References: <10949@mimsy.UUCP> <1525@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 8

In article <1525@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
>I don't understand why ANSI C doesn't allow casts and sizeofs in
>preprocessor expressions. ...
>In my compiler, they follow the same rules because it's the same code!

We didn't want to mandate that the preprocessor be integrated into the
language parser proper.  I agree that the language would be nicer if
it WERE so integrated, but for historical reasons it wasn't.