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Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago

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On 26/05/2013 07:44, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:
>> On 5/25/2013 2:24 AM, Keith Thompson wrote:
> It seems like the C++ community is generally open to useful additions
> to the language, more so than the C community. Look at all the arcana
> added since C++98. Furthermore, it seems like the GNU community is
> even more open to extensions that go beyond what the standards
> provide. Yet no one seems interested in the lowly preprocessor, even
> though it hasn't been touched in decades. Besides, no new feature
> "causes trouble" unless it introduces an incompatibility, which it
> never should. If you don't use it, you don't notice it's there. I was
> just hoping someone else would find this useful.
>


I guess you do not realise how big a problem the pre-processor is to
C++, not least because it is completely 'ignorant' of such things as
namespaces. If a way could be found to remove it or at least seriously
reduce its use I think WG21 would grab the opportunity.  The
pre-processor does get used extensively but the cost is actually pretty
high in complexity and debugging costs.

New features cause trouble by adding more ways to go wrong. We should be
endeavouring to reduce dependence on the pre-processor rather than
adding to it.

BTW I suspect that constexpr from C++11 might solve problems such as
upper-casing a literal so that the result could be placed in ROM.

Francis


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A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago "Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-05-23 19:18 -0600
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2013-05-24 15:19 -0700
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2013-05-25 02:23 -0700
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2013-05-25 02:24 -0700
    Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago "Kenneth \"Bessarion\" Boyd" <zaimoni@zaimoni.com> - 2013-05-25 23:43 -0700
    Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago "Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-05-25 23:44 -0700
      Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Francis Glassborow <francis.glassborow@btinternet.com> - 2013-05-26 08:52 -0600
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@googlemail.com> - 2013-05-25 23:43 -0700
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Peter <pcurran88@googlemail.com> - 2013-05-30 19:40 -0600
    Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago "Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco@ix.netcom.com> - 2013-06-01 02:04 -0600
      Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago ootiib@hot.ee - 2013-06-01 14:53 -0600
      Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2013-06-04 10:41 -0600
        Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago espie@lain.home (Marc Espie) - 2013-06-05 23:12 -0700
          Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2013-06-06 09:20 -0700
  Re: A preprocessor feature we should have had 40 years ago Jens Schweikhardt <usenet@schweikhardt.net> - 2013-06-09 02:21 -0700

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