Re: gcj -D

[Mike Moreton <mike at pillim dot demon dot co dot uk>]

Per said:
> Most general purpose programming languages are *not* with pre-processors,
> at least not standard.  In fact, I can't think of any common ones that
> do, except C, C++, and Objective-C.  PL/I had pre-processing.  Some languages
> (the Lisp family, Dylan) have macro processors, but they work at a higher
> lever, and are less common.
> 
> Ada, Pascal, Eiffel, Modula-2, Modula-3, Chill, ML, ...
> As far as I know, none of these have standard prc-processors.  A number
> of these languages are used for embedded systems.

Of course, you're right - a long time ago I had to program a controller
in machine code without even an assembler, so it's definitely possible
to write embedded code without a preprocessor.  It's simply a matter of
what makes life easier.

I'd hazzard to guess that #ifdef might also be useful for maintaining
different variants even outside the embedded sphere - but I'll defer to the
knowlege of those more experienced in Java than myself.

Thanks for the response!

Mike.