Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!orr
From: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Extensible or Preprocessor
Message-ID: <1672@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Sep 88 14:20:41 GMT
References: <1593@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <810002@hpmtlx.HP.COM> <1650@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <837@cernvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 15

In article <837@cernvax.UUCP> hjm@cernvax.UUCP (Hubert Matthews) writes:
>One problem with pre-processors is error handling.  Consider a PP that 
>translates Ratfor into FORTRAN IV.  Whilst the program is running, a division
>by zero occurs and an error is reported.  The line number returned is the 
>number of the line that caused this exception, but in the FORTRAN program and
>not the Ratfor program.

This is neither necissarily true, nor true in practice. My C++ compiler
(which is a preprocessor for C) produces error messages in terms of the
original program, not the produced program. In fact in all the months I've
been using this program I have never had to look at the code produced by the
preprocessor (which is just as well since it is pretty unreadable.)
By the way, I thought ratfor had evaporated into the mists of UNIX history....

===Fraser