stupid C preprocessor question

[Robert Dewar]

Steven G. Kargl wrote:

> I don't have access to
> the C99 standard, but Harbison and Steele state in a discussion
> of #if ... #endif constructs that "A group of lines that is 
> discarded is not processed by the preprocessor." (H&S, 5th ed.
> page 62).

This is just plain wrong, or rather casually careless.

> It appears that gcc is preprocessing the discarded lines.

The lines discarded still have to be valid sequences of tokens.