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From: jls@summit.novell.com (-mlc-+Schilling J.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: C++ bashing (was Re: Vendor bashing? Sort of.)
Date: 5 Oct 1994 10:24:31 -0400
Organization: Novell, Summit
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References: <85BA331C6A0@annwfn.com> <36rucbINN4gr@marble.summit.novell.com>
 <36s7pv$pqk@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>
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Date: 1994-10-05T10:24:31-04:00
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In article <36s7pv$pqk@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>Jonothan, if you reread my original post, I never said that C-Front was
>not a compiler, I said that it was a preprocessor.  [...]
>
>I find preprocessor to be the most precise [term]. To me
>it means precisely that you have a processor that takes one source language
>and generates another which is then subsequently fed into an existing
>compiler for the generated language.  [...]

We're in complete agreement other than on what the term "preprocessor" means.
To me, the feeling of the term suggests "a little work before starting the 
main work", which fits into the C/C++ and PL/I model of a general purpose 
language that is augmented with a (comparatively smaller and simpler) macro 
language.  Cfront doesn't fit, since {C++ - C} is a bigger language than C.

But I have no idea what the general accepted meaning of "preprocessor" is....

-- 
Jonathan Schilling
Novell, UNIX Systems Group (UNIX System Laboratories)
jls@summit.novell.com