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You're quite right in that early C was a primitive compiler, and adding a macro processor was a cheap and easy way to add power.

Using the macro preprocessor to work around some fundamental issues with the language is not what I meant.

I meant devising one's own language using macros. The canonical example:

    #define BEGIN {
    #define END }

We laugh about that today, but the 80's people actually did that. Today's macros are often just more complicated attempts at the same thing.

The tales I hear about Lisp is that a team's code is not portable to another team, because they each invent their own macro language in order to be able to use Lisp at all.

▲ lor_louis a day ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, I'd rather type BEGIN instead of <<? Or whatever the trigraph is supposed to be. We tend to forget that a lot of computers didn't have the keys to type "mathematical" symbols.

	▲	WalterBright a day ago \| parent [-]
		EBCDIC was already dead in the 1980s. Nobody ever used the trigraphs except for one company that hung on for years until even the C++ community decided enough was enough and dumped them. Besides, what people wrote was: `#define BEGIN {` not: `#define BEGIN <<?`

▲ kazinator a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Stephen Bourne used such macros in the Bourne Shell sources to make the code resemble Algol.

The source is very clear and readable.

▲

WalterBright a day ago | parent [-]

Have you adopted his macros in your own projects?

	▲	kazinator a day ago \| parent [-]
		No because even if I could identify a benefit to these macros (which I can't in the contexts in which I work) there's a cost to using them. Macros whuch simply transliterate tokens to other tokens without performing a code transformation do not have a compelling technical benefit. Only a non-technical benefit to a peculiar minority of users. In terms of cost, the readability and writeability are fine. What's not fine is that the macros will confuse tooling which processes C code without necessarily expanding it through the preprocessor. Tooling like text editing modes,identifier cross-referencers and whatnot. I've used C macros to extend a language with constructs like exception handling. These have a syntax that harmonizes with the language, making then compatible with all the tooling I use. There's a benefit because the macro expansions are too verbose and detailed to correctly repeat by hand, not to mention to correctly update if the implementation is adjusted.