I have not been following the details of this thread, but let me urge caution. Cpp is used in mostly-trivial ways to deal with the fact that a single blob of source code is being fed into several different compilers. The fact that cpp is not perfect for this use is not a reason to design something new. cpp is readily available everywhere, whereas some new tool would not be. It certainly seems overkill to design a whole new pre-processor system! (Mind you, doing so might be an interesting exercise in its own right -- Template Haskell is such an experiment -- but the need here is for a solution, not a research programme.) I agree with Johannes: (a) keep it simple, (b) integrate with compilers. (a) argues for cpp. As to (b) is there some reason that Hugs cannot simply run cpp? Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: libraries-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:libraries-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Johannes | Waldmann | Sent: 07 April 2004 07:43 | To: Alastair Reid | Cc: libraries@haskell.org | Subject: Re: #ifdef considered harmful | | Alastair Reid wrote: | | > So, I'd like to float the idea that the Haskell preprocessor should _only_ | > support conditional compilation, that macro expansion should only occur in | > lines that begin with '#' not in "normal" lines and that macros should always | > evaluate to expressions with simple scalar types (ints, strings, etc.) | | > [It's probably simple enough that the preprocessor could | > easily be built into Hugs if we wanted. This isn't the primary | > motivation for this suggestion but it would be nice.] | | I'd vote for that (as a user). If we absolutely need preprocessing, | then the above looks like a very reasonable way to go: | 1. keep it simple, 2. integrate it with compilers. | | best regards, | -- | -- Johannes Waldmann, Tel/Fax: (0341) 3076 6479 / 6480 -- | ------ http://www.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/~waldmann/ --------- | | _______________________________________________ | Libraries mailing list | Libraries@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries