Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (JAMES ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: inlines and __LINE__
Message-ID: <10229@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 90 17:15:24 GMT
References: <2381@ektools.UUCP>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (JAMES ADCOCK)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 21

In article <2381@ektools.UUCP> randolph@ektools.UUCP (Gary L. Randolph) writes:
>Please tell me I'm missing something obvious here!
>I want to use __LINE__ in an inline function as follows:

Your missing something obvious here.  [Which I'm well aware of, having tried
this once too.]  Namely CPP macro expansion happens before any C++ stuff,
so when C++ sucks up the inline function to be regurgitated later [suitably
modified] __LINE__ is already 9.  So, in fact, as claimed, inlines are
not macros, and excepting bugs work just like normal function calls except
generating bigger, faster, harder to debug code -- and also doing a real
good job of exercising any remaining bugs/restrictions in your underlying
C code generator.

--I would claim this is just yet another indication that CPP is a hack,
and needs to be replaced with features in the language/compilers to handle
most normal everyday programming tasks, including debugging support,
import/export, asserts, condition compilers, templates, etc.  CPP is untyped, 
unsafe, frequently used in unsyntactic ways, etc.  Try writing reasonable
tools to munge C/C++ sources.  You can't.  To parse C/C++ code you have
to have valid syntax, and strict knowledge of when a word is a type-identifier,
and CPP defeats all this.  IMHO.  [Not to rekindle an old flame]