Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor (Was: why ada is so unpopular ?)

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

The more I think about it the more I want there to be a conditional 
compilation capability that would allow some unlimited set of logical 
names to be associated with strings at compile time. What you propose 
would be helpful but A) still only helps where you can put an "if" 
statement and is useless around declarations and b) doesn't account for 
all the possible variants that may impact a program at compile time or 
run time. "Operating_System", for example, is insufficient to tell you 
if you have certain libraries available to you or not. Unless you force 
some structure on the string that allows it to be parsed to provide more 
detailed information.

I think we either need a single logical compile-time variable with a 
structured string that can be parsed (some format like "Attrribute => 
Value, ....") or you need an arbitrary set of compile time variables 
that the developer can establish and document as required settings for 
conditional compilation.

Most of what's in System seems to be useful only at run time. By then, I 
could have easily solved the problem for myself by having some kind of 
app-defined configuration file or similar thing I read in and use to 
determine which calls to make. So any solution has to happen at compile 
time or it really doesn't do any good.

MDC


Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> 
> In Ada 83 that wouldn't have worked.  But I think it would be wonderful 
> to get rid of the type Name in system and add three string constants:
> 
> Operating_System:      constant String := implementation_dependent;
> Hardware_Architecture: constant String := implementation_dependent;
> Compiler:              constant String := implementation_dependent;
> Version:               constant String := implementation_dependent;
> 

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