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From: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: language commenting constructs
Message-ID: <1623@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Mar 89 16:18:26 GMT
References: <1543@zen.UUCP> <10460@lanl.gov> <39273@oliveb.olivetti.com> <3452@ficc.uu.net> <18972@srcsip.UUCP>
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Reply-To: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
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In article <18972@srcsip.UUCP> beede@pavo.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Michael Beede) writes:
>Macros are chiefly used in C to substitue
>for constants and to make up for a lack of inline functions.  Most C
>programmers would be happy to never see another macro if they could
>use inline functions.

This would imply that macros were unnecessary in C++, which is not the case
(yet).  Other typical uses include expressions and declarations parameterised
on types, finding the offset of a field in a structure, and implementing
bitsets.

>If it looks like a function it should _be_ a function.

Yes.  Down with side-effects!  (I assume that was what you meant :-)


Dave Berry,	Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh.
		db%lfcs.ed.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
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