How can I find out cc or cpp symbols?

[Greg Noel]

In article <1339 at ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> I write:
>I've wondered why the ANSI committee didn't simply mandate that there be a
>header file, say <default.h>, that was implicitly #included, and that contained
>all the machine-specific, system-specific, and vendor-specific names.

In article <7119 at bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi at bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>It is a terrible idea to make any assumptions about vendor-specific symbols.
>There are two reasons for this.

I completely concur -- but this wasn't my point.  What I'm considering is
the mechanism, not the contents.  Once the mechanism is determined, we can
moot the contents, but as long as the mechanism is outside the control of
the system administrator, we are pretty much stuck with the ad-hoc stuff we
have now.  I think that if the mechanism were not wired in, there would be
some pressure for standard things to be expected in <default.h>, the same
way there is pressure for standard things in, say, <values.h>.  And it would
provide a home for the #define that specified POSIX conformance (or whatever).

>Worse, System V machines define "unix".

Er, this seems reasonable to me -- I thought it was....

>The right way to deal with predefined symbols is to put all
>dependencies on them in a separate header file, and *manually edit that
>file* when installing software on a new system.

Your point is taken, although I prefer a Configure script or other mechanism
to build the information, as there's less chance for error.
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo   Greg.Noel at SanDiego.NCR.COM  or  greg at ncr-sd