Three Things I Love About C(sigtrap.wordpress.com)
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Three Things I Love About C
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2 comments
Macros are better because of performance? That's premature optimization if I ever saw it. OS-specific configuration / function definition is not going to be the performance bottleneck on pretty much any app I've seen. Maybe if you're writing a CGI program where it's run many times and has to do this setup each time, but then CGI is dead for a reason. Macros have plenty of problems that result in weird edge-case behavior, and I'd really rather not have them.
Oh, and finally, they aren't unique to C. You can use the macro preprocessor on any source code you like.
Oh, and finally, they aren't unique to C. You can use the macro preprocessor on any source code you like.
To put it in a less snarky way, sure, inline asm is great, but it's just a compiler-dependent extension. Also, there are plenty of non-C language compilers that implement it.
The preprocessor, OTOH, is somewhat more of a necessary evil when dealing with C. Beyond giving symbolic names to constants without having to actually allocate memory for them, the only real, good use I can think of for it is conditional compilation (which, granted, is a pretty good use). Oh, and, as devinj points out, the preprocessor has nothing really to do with C.
Pointers, I'll admit, are a great feature, but did he really have to give such a lousy example? It was kind of like Fire Marshal Bill telling me how cool propane torches are, but without the funny.