[Gambas-user] C like #include for Gambas

[Benoît Minisini]

Le 12/06/2012 13:01, jm a écrit :
> On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 12:03 +0200, Rolf-Werner Eilert wrote:
>>> You already have at your disposal a program which fully understands
>>> what to do with #include (and all the other pre-processor directives
>>> which have been mentioned). Have you tried it out yet?
>>>
>>
>> Is it possible to insert the C pre-processor into the Play-Button
>> function of the Gambas IDE, maybe the way you can insert filters into
>> kprinter? That would be ideal here.
>>
>> Just an idea... :-)
>>
>> Rolf
>
> Wow!
>
> Thinking about it, that is even more powerful to cooperate
> with external preprocessor than just adding preprocesor functionality on
> its own.
>
> A simple check box in project properties dialog box to enable/disable
> preprocessing can turn the feature on/off. Some programs you may just
> not want to allow preprocessing and so checking it off here will allow
> the compiler to complain bitterly to go get it fixed.
>

Hi,

Sorry if I disappoint you, but I'm strongly against any preprocessing 
feature in Gambas.

I'm talking about code subsitution, not the features currently 
implemented in the Gambas compiler, that just allow compiling one part 
of the code or another.

Why ?

Preprocessing is mainly used (in C) for the three following reasons:

1) Function and variable declaration.
2) Writing the same repeating pattern once.
3) Writing generic functions.

In interpreted OO languages, and especially in Gambas, these features 
are not needed:

1) Function and variable declaration are done automatically by the compiler.
2) OO has inheritance.
3) There is no templates (or 'generic') in Gambas as in Java. But you 
have the Variant datatype.

Moreover, preprocessing makes programs mostly unreadable, can create 
very difficult bugs, make the source code impossible to analyze (bye-bye 
automatic completion...), and so on.

Developing a program is 20% writing it and 80% debugging it. So 
preprocessing makes that worse.

If you need preprocessing in your project, then I think there is a 
fundamental design flaw in it. I have never need it when writing any big 
Gambas project.

Regards,

-- 
Benoît Minisini