mem (11/05/82)
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