#ifdef considered harmful

[Graham Klyne]

At 20:18 06/04/04 +0200, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
> > I agree that this should be possible with the hmake code.  FWIW, I
> > have, in fact, already teased that functionality out (to a small
> > degree) and made it available in my work-in-progress HMake API.
>
>Will such a preprocessor work on source code like cpp does or on a syntax
>tree?  The latter would be better, IMO; the former would probably have little
>or no advantage over cpp.

The key advantage over CPP is that it's available wherever a Haskell system 
is installed.  The tools you take for granted on Unix/Linux are not always 
installed on (say) Windows target systems.

My goal here is that Haskell programs be easy to use on any 
target.  Installing a Haskell system may be too much overhead, but we can't 
get away without that.  Anything else is an unnecessary barrier to adoption.

#g


------------
Graham Klyne
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