🚀 go-pugleaf

In article fsf@erawan.cognex.com, Michael Cook <mcook@cognex.com> writes:
>Is it legal to have //-style comments within a preprocessor directive?

Yes.

>  If so,
>that'd mean C++ compilers would be precluded from using ISO C preprocessors.

Preprocessing is not a separate translation step according to the C and
C++ language definitions. The preprocessing need not be an identifiable
step, nor is there any requirement to provide preprocessed output.

If an implementation chooses to make preprocessing a separate step (or
a separable step) it may do so. The preprocessing rules for C and C++ are 
not quite the same, due to //-comments in C++, so a shared preprocessor
would have to take that into account. Such shared preprocessors typically
take a command-line flag to say whether it is dealing with C or C++ code.

C will almost certainly adopt //-comments, and some C compilers currently
accept them anyway. Thus, the point will soon be moot.

---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage@eng.sun.com
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