Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: goodbye cpp ??? (macros vs. inline functions)
Message-ID: <1988Nov23.173342.18978@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <6590072@hplsla.HP.COM> <1757@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <3637@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1304@cod.NOSC.MIL> <12903@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 88 17:33:42 GMT

In article <12903@duke.cs.duke.edu> crm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Charlie Martin) writes:
> ... There is no reason why the scanner can't handle conditional
> compilation as well, just as comments are handled...
> the loss in performance in the scanner is almost certainly less than
> the loss of having a whole nother compilation phase...

You are confusing design with implementation.  Many C compilers implement
the whole preprocessor as part of their scanner.  The separation into a
distinct phase is basically a historical artifact in AT&T compilers.
-- 
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