Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ur-valhalla!badri
From: badri@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu (Badri Lokanathan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Statement terminators
Message-ID: <2179@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Date: 9 May 89 03:58:31 GMT
References: <41117@oliveb.olivetti.com> <225800165@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <1273@l.cc.purdue.edu> <2296@mit-caf.MIT.EDU> <1843@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Reply-To: badri@ee.rochester.edu (Badri Lokanathan)
Organization: UR Dept. of Electrical Engg, Rochester NY 14627
Lines: 26

>In article <2296@mit-caf.MIT.EDU> vlcek@mit-caf.MIT.EDU (Jim Vlcek) writes:
>> In fact, I myself would lean the other direction and prefer that
>> macros not follow the strict ``to the next newline'' rule, but rather
>> have a more explicit means of terminating the definition body.

In article <1843@ubu.warwick.UUCP> geoff@cs.warwick.ac.uk (Geoff Rimmer) writes:
>I agree that it can be *very* annoying having to backquote all the
>newlines in macros (take a look at "putc" in stdio.h !)  But how else
>could cpp be designed so it knows when to stop?  By matching the
>parentheses/ brackets & braces?

One could have a default set of delimiters that can be modified on the
fly (as in sed pattern matching, for instance)

Say the default is ^
#define Foo ^your macro^
But if your macro contains ^, then modify by
#define Foo @your macro@

cpp can easily be designed to recognize the first non-white character as a
delimiter ...
-- 
"I care about my fellow man              {) badri@ee.rochester.edu
 Being taken for a ride,                //\\ {ames,cmcl2,columbia,cornell,
 I care that things start changing     ///\\\ garp,harvard,ll-xn,rutgers}!
 But there's no one on my side."-UB40   _||_   rochester!ur-valhalla!badri