C++ alternative tokens in the preprocessor

[Dave Brolley]

Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> 
> "Martin v. Loewis" <martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de> writes:
> 
> | > This is not a good error message.  It expects the user to know gritty
> | > details of the official grammar.  I would much rather see something
> | > like
> | >
> | > a.cc:1:9: "and" is not a legal macro name in C++
> |
> | This is slightly off-topic now, but I was going to make the comment
> | that I feel such an error message is inappropriate; in particular,
> | that use of the adjective "legal" is.
> |
> | I believe it was RMS who once mentioned that the compiler should not
> | declare things "illegal"
> | ( http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/1999-09n/msg00395.html ), with "not legal"
> | probably being just as bad.
> |
> | I always used "ill-formed", to describe the code and not its authors,
> | but that may be a bit technical.
> 
> I second your note; I think "ill-formed" or "invalid" may be good
> qualifiers.

At IBM, we never used 'invalid' because it tends to get
translated as 'physically challenged'.

Dave