Re: [boost] The C++ Post-Processor

Subject: Re: [boost] The C++ Post-Processor
From: OvermindDL1 (overminddl1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-10-18 17:35:06

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Christopher Jefferson
<chris_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> On 18 Oct 2009, at 18:56, Vladimir Prus wrote:
>
>> Christopher Jefferson wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 18 Oct 2009, at 18:14, Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> I agree with everything except Sebastians notion the preprocessor
>>>>>> was not
>>>>>> Turing complete, because it is (this has been shown in the past).
>>>>>> But that's
>>>>>> just a minor detail.
>>>>>
>>>>> Are you sure? I'm sure it's not. Template instansiation certainly is,
>>>>> but I'm sure the preprocessor isn't, due to the lack of recursion or
>>>>> backtracking.
>>>>
>>>> See here: http://tinyurl.com/yj6crup
>>>
>>> While that is a very impressive piece of coding, it doesn't show NP-
>>> completeness of the preprocessor,
>>
>> Did you mean "Turing-complete"?
>
> Yes, sorry. And also sorry how far we are drifting off topic.
>
> One thing that lambda code does show to me is that there are some in
> principle fairly simple extensions which could be made to the C preprocessor
> which would make it much more useful, while keeping it's current approach of
> being unaware of the underlying language. Has anyone ever investigated how
> they might write a "better preprocessor", which mght simplify or remove much
> of the nastier parts of the preprocessor hacks in boost?

Hence why I mentioned D templates.  You could probably hack something
like that into Clang, along with D mixins (all compatible with C++
syntax), that gives you just about all the power anyone could ever
want for C++, in a vastly easier to use way then is current.