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From: english@stromboli.usc.edu (Joe English)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Nonsyntactic macros (was Re: Standard indentation?)
Message-ID: <14107@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 16 Dec 88 23:23:12 GMT
References: <NELSON.88Dec5142722@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <641@htsa.uucp> <6580@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <2417@ssc-vax.UUCP>
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Reply-To: english@stromboli.usc.edu (Joe English)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
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In article <2417@ssc-vax.UUCP> dmg@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Geary) writes:

>One of the first things that students in my C class who are reformed
>;-) Pascal programmers, want to do is this:
>
>#define BEGIN  {
>#define END    }
>
>and a whole slew of other macros to make C look like pascal.  
>

Which, being new C programmers, they don't really know how to do.
Just the other day I was helping an incorrigible Pascal programmer
debug some C code.  She was only using C out of necessity, and had
done the following:

#define begin     {
#define end;      }

Which is not only wrong, but can be wrong in different ways depending
on the preprocessor!  

I really think that it was a bad idea for K&R to mention that this
sort of thing is possible.  Is their discussion of non-syntactic
macros in the 2nd edition, too?



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