More ?

[utzoo!decvax!ittvax!sii!mem]

c
Since my C comments went over so well (no replies, no comments), I
might as well continue...

I would love to have a good macro capability.  Something on the
order of the PL/I preprocessor or the macro ability of MACRO-10
(DEC-10/20 assembler).  Some things in particular:

  -  Ability to declare constants without having to give them
     values explicitly.  That is, nested macro definition.  The
     most common use is to assign incrementing values to a list
     of preprocessor variables (e.g., status codes, indexes).

  -  Full string building facilities (this falls out of a
     good macro processor, anyway).

  -  A symbol separation operator.  Used to tell the preprocessor that
     there is a word break, but otherwise invisible.

  -  Ability to substitute ANY string for ANY other.  Never mind just
     symbol in the #define'd name.

It would also be nice to see bit manipulation stuff in C.  Not just
bitfields, but actually being able to explicitly pick a particular
bit and have the compiler deal with it.

Mark Mallett