Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!rutgers!cmcl2!rocky8!cucard!ccnysci!dan
From: dan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran vs C for computations
Summary: The C preprocessor doesn't know C
Message-ID: <925@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 14 Oct 88 18:38:47 GMT
References: <465@quintus.UUCP> <4092@lanl.gov> <473@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: dan@ccnysci.UUCP (Dan Schlitt)
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 24

Unless my memory has completely gone, the C preprocessor knows nothing
about the C language syntax.  Proposals that would have required that it do
so were discussed heatedly during the C standardization process.  The
prevailing opinion was that the preprocessor was simply a text
processor that understands preprocessor commands like
#include
#define
#ifdef
#endif
and so on and uses them to process the text fed to it.  That the way
in which the commands function may be skewed towards the way C is
constructed should not be a suprise.  But it will do its thing on any
old text file.  Every night it does its thing on my calendar files and
I am very satisfied with the results.

Fortran folk may be astonished to learn that the preprocessor won't do
all of the C macro definitions that some people would like to do.  It
is a tool with limitations.  So don't tell me that it won't do some
fortran macro that you would like it to and conclude that it is a
useless tool for fortran.

For one, I am glad to have cpp available for all the good things that
it will do for me.  I would miss it badly if it went away.  I would
even use it with fortran.