Something new in C syntax
Norman Diamond
diamond at csl.sony.JUNET
Mon Jan 30 14:53:27 AEST 1989
In article <4586 at bunker.UUCP> allen at bunker.UUCP (C. Allen Grabert) writes:
> >I have since decided that the ifdef's do NOT remove the action of the
> >comment delimiters.
In article <9522 at smoke.BRL.MIL>, gwyn at smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> Of course not, since comments are processed before preprocessing
> directives. This isn't "new".
True, it isn't new; it's only surprising and inconsistent. In other
cases, whichever construct occurs first (in a left-to-right scan) takes
priority. For example, "#ifdef" is a string but not a preprocessor
directive; /* "abc */ is a comment but not a syntax error (of unclosed
string), etc. Someone intuitively guessed that /* coming first would
comment out the # that comes on the next line. Intuition is dangerous
to C programs.
--
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.jp at relay.cs.net)
The above opinions are my own. | Why are programmers criticized for
If they're also your opinions, | re-inventing the wheel, when car
you're infringing my copyright. | manufacturers are praised for it?
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