Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!claris!apple!kchen From: kchen@Apple.COM (Kok Chen) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: how widespread is this cpp bug? Keywords: cpp whitespace bug Message-ID: <21459@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 30 Nov 88 23:00:43 GMT References: <49179@pyramid.pyramid.com> Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA Lines: 41 In article <49179@pyramid.pyramid.com> markhall@pyramid.UUCP (Mark Hall) writes: >The following code compiles and runs on pyramid, att-3b2, and sun3: > > #include> main() > { > prin/* comment in the middle */tf ( "Hello World.\n" ); > } > ... > >Does your cpp have this `feature'? Anyone know the history? I >suspect that AT&T and SUN know about this, but have chosen not to fix it. >Anyone know why? > Boy, have I seen this "feature" abused! (Greenhills 68k accepts it, the last I looked.) The worst abuse was of the form: #define FOO( x,y ) foo/**/x( y ) main() { FOO( bar, 1 ) ; FOO( baz, 2 ) ; } foobar( z ) { } foobaz( z ) { } Readability? Half of the folks who encountered that segment of code asked what it did. When they found out, they questioned the sanity of the author. Kok Chen {decwrl,sun}!kchen Apple Computer, Inc.