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.