C-type macros are both good and bad. They are less powerful than assembler macros with their .labels and looping and so forth, but OTOH they incorporate the idea of both assembler macros and assembler SET symbols in a single construct. C is really a very different sort of language from assembler: whereas assembler is line oriented, C is mostly character-stream oriented. Assembler type macros would not exactly make sense.
PL/I has a very powerful "macro" (preprocessor, I think they call it) facility. I don't know it well at all, but in my impression it is more powerful than either assembler or C macros. COBOL, OTOH ... Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Phil Smith Sent: Saturday, December 9, 2017 3:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Address of a Literal I can't help but note that it's pretty funny that people are complaining about assembler limitations. When I was a lad, the assembler could barely do macros... (Of course, so-called "high-level" languages like C should be so lucky as to have the power of assembler macros! Their idea of a "macro" is really quite primitive.)
