[C preprocessor]

[Simon]

I simply use defines to make the code readable by replacing text as shown above. The new register names make a little more sense but with thing that require multiple bits I get fed up with looking them up so I just define what i want to do and it is replaced by the code.

[tggzzz]

As I've found just this week... forget a return statement in a small function. Looked at assembly output; half of my program was gone. Turns out, newer GCC revisions could choose to not generate code at all for a statement with undefined behaviour, and all surrounding bits of that code. Nice try finding that, but also more reasons not to write crap code quickly.

You are lucky. You couldn't have objected if it chose to "rm -rf /", or cause demons to fly out from your nose

[Simon]

As I've found just this week... forget a return statement in a small function. Looked at assembly output; half of my program was gone. Turns out, newer GCC revisions could choose to not generate code at all for a statement with undefined behaviour, and all surrounding bits of that code. Nice try finding that, but also more reasons not to write crap code quickly.

You are lucky. You couldn't have objected if it chose to "rm -rf /", or cause demons to fly out from your nose

Err, I was made to put return statements in functions as CCC threw a wobbly and insisted. Mainly on interrupt functions.

[tggzzz]

As I've found just this week... forget a return statement in a small function. Looked at assembly output; half of my program was gone. Turns out, newer GCC revisions could choose to not generate code at all for a statement with undefined behaviour, and all surrounding bits of that code. Nice try finding that, but also more reasons not to write crap code quickly.

You are lucky. You couldn't have objected if it chose to "rm -rf /", or cause demons to fly out from your nose

Err, I was made to put return statements in functions as CCC threw a wobbly and insisted. Mainly on interrupt functions.

"undefined behaviour" can cause "nasal demons". But I'm sure you know that.

[hans]

Very funny.

[tggzzz]

Very funny.

"Many a truth is spoken in jest". The underlying problem isn't funny, unfortunately!

[andyturk]

I'd rather use language/compiler features for constants, "inline" functions, and abstractions intended to make code more portable.

Would you use C++ templates to compute the sequence of prime numbers during compilation? (Naturally the compilation can never finish!)
Example: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C%2B%2B_Programming/Templates/Template_Meta-Programming#History_of_TMP

Would I? Yeah, probably. But I've never actually needed to do that (yet). I did look at some TMP code that generated a constexpr trig lookup table at compile-time, which was very cool and far better (IMO) than a two-stage build with a code generator that spit out some C source to be compiled in the next phase.

[... macros]

Yes, we all use them.
Yes, we've all been infuriated by other people's use of them.

So, how about m4? It makes the C preprocessor look rather toy-like. And m4 was also designed by K&R.