#ifdef considered harmful (was: DData)

[Graham Klyne]

At 19:55 06/04/04 +0200, Sven Panne wrote:
>Graham Klyne wrote:
>>At 16:12 06/04/04 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
>>>Much as we all hate cpp, I'm afraid the standard libraries are
>>>already heavily littered with #ifdefs.  Getting rid of them is
>>>basically impossible.
>>I guess it's the community's choice of what is important, but in my 
>>experience this is a major impediment to distributing portable programs 
>>written in Haskell for use by non-Haskellite end users.
>
>Malcolm only pointed out that it is basically impossible to *implement* the
>libraries without #ifdefs due to the different capabilities and internal
>design choices of the Haskell systems. *Using* these libraries should of
>course be possible without reverting to CPP.

The problem here is that, when using Hugs, the source code of the libraries 
needs to be part of the input to Hugs.

>>>There should be no externally visible type differences in standard
>>>libraries. [...]
>>So I would hope, but I seem to recall coming across some variations of 
>>function parameters between systems.  I don't remember where.
>
>That shouldn't be the case. I guess we still have some dark corners in the
>POSIX vs. non-POSIX area, suggestions for improving this (and other places,
>too, of course) are highly welcome. It would really be helpful to know what
>caused your grief...

If I rediscover it, I'll send a note to this list.

#g


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