-E and stdin

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Oct 19, 1998, "Paul Forgey" <paulf@aphrodite.com> wrote:

> I've noticed gcc doesn't like to read stdin with -E unless - is specified.
> This breaks some makefiles assuming an older gcc -- why can't gcc check
> isatty() before complaining about no source files?

For one, because it would confuse people that would try:

gcc -E
whatever
^D
whatever

And it would work, but then, if they tried:

cat > foo
whatever
^D
gcc -E < foo
gcc: No input files

-- 
Alexandre Oliva  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva  aoliva@{acm.org}
oliva@{dcc.unicamp.br,gnu.org,egcs.cygnus.com,samba.org}
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil