C macros

Hi Barbara



Thank you for your comments. I am happy to start a discussion on macros.

Please understand I value and appreciate your comments.

Couple of points.



I found the 'forever' macro in this book. pp97



The C programming Language

By Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.

Published by Prentice-Hall in 1988

ISBN 0-13-110362-8 (paperback)

ISBN 0-13-110370-9

-- exerpt --

Any name may be defined with any replacement text. For
example

#define forever for (;;) /* infinite loop */

defines a new word, forever, for an infinite loop.



Do you mean to say that the C gods K&R themselves published weird code?



Also if C programmers cannot cope with macros does not that imply they

are not truly C programmers.



Why does C have the ability to have such marco substitution if it is

not to be used.

Particularly if it helps avoid a potential bug that the compiler

does not report and only manifests at execution time (= for ==).



I believe I will have no problem interpreting the standard C

code or other C code with macros.



Frank

*Subject: Re: First C Program

*From: Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>

*Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 13:42:13 -0400

Hi Frank, I have been thinking about the use of macros such as

EQ, forever, NE etc, and I think you are doing yourself a disservice

by using these macros as a beginner C programmer. Here are some of the

reasons:

You will find it less easy to read "normal" C code if you don't get

used to seeing *and quickly interpreting* things like != == for(;;)

You will find it more difficult to incorporate code that you find on the

web.

You will have to either change all the == and != to use your macros,

or perhaps even worse, you will have a mixture of EQ and ==.

You will not be able to post snippets of code to forums without

replacing your macros. I wouldn't post weird code like that to any forum

even with an explanation for what the macros mean.

The discussion would almost certainly be more about the use of the macros
than about whatever question you were trying to ask.