Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: token pasting (was: how widespread is this cpp bug?) Message-ID: <1988Dec5.195231.3658@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <49179@pyramid.pyramid.com> <6625@csli.STANFORD.EDU> <9026@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1747@solo3.cs.vu.nl> Date: Mon, 5 Dec 88 19:52:31 GMT In article <1747@solo3.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes: >Why didn't the ANSI committee legalize that current practice, instead of >defining a new paste operator (##)? Because that current practice was current practice only on some compilers; on others it did not work and could not easily be implemented. In particular, it is hard to make it work under a token-based preprocessor. It's also hard to define in a precise way that doesn't cause trouble with other things. (He who does not value a precise definition of this stuff has never tried to implement it.) -- SunOSish, adj: requiring | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 32-bit bug numbers. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu