a nifty feature for c preprocessor

[Ian Lance Taylor]

R A <ren_zokuken01@hotmail.com> writes:

>> The gcc developers, and everyone else involved in the development of C
>> as a language, are perhaps not superhuman - but I suspect their combined
>> knowledge, experience and programming ability outweighs yours.
>
> given. but do you have a consensus of the community that this feature is not worth including? i haven't even heard but from a few people saying that "it's not worth it because if it was, 'we're the ones to have thought about it'".
>
> computing science (may i call it a science??), is all about objectivity and examining the theories and evidence. it should be prepared re-examine everything when a new idea is introduced or challenged.
>
> so if it's a bad idea, explain to me exactly why; not go about human politics.
>  		 	   		  

Any gcc developer who feels that this proposal is a good idea, please
chime in here.

I personally do not feel it is worth the effort.  It's easy to use a
more powerful macro processor, such as m4, to generate your C code.  The
benefit of building a more powerful macro processor into the language
proper seems minimal.

This particular extension seems problematic when cross-compiling.  In
what environment should the expressions be evaluated?

Ian