Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!auspex!guy From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Save CPP! Message-ID: <583@auspex.UUCP> Date: 5 Dec 88 19:05:05 GMT References: <5202@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara Lines: 20 >The thing I like about CPP is that it seems to work with a base level of >functionality on the six different C compilers we use to produce the >products we sell. Not all C implementations necessarily have "cpp". That just happens to be the way certain C language constructs, such as "#include", "#define", "#if", etc., are supported in many C compilers. Any reasonable C implementation had, however, damn well better support at least some minimal set of those constructs; they are specified as part of the language in K&R 1, and a larger set of them are also in the dpANS and are almost certain - hell, I'll go out on a limb and say "certain" - to appear in the final C standard. Furthermore, the copy I have of "The C++ Programming Language" *also* lists some of those constructs in the "Reference Manual", so I'd damn well expect any current C++ implementation to support them as well. I presume some people are arguing that those language features should be dropped from the C++; until that's done, though, dropping them from what purports to be a C++ implementation would be stupid.