On 2/17/26 18:21, Jon Perryman wrote:
C's motto, why bother doing something once in the compiler when you can do it
millions of times at run time. Consider the highly inefficient PRINTF where the
first argument is parsed every time it executes instead of being parsed at
compile time. C macros are an embarrassment because they show how little the
industry understands the power of a true macro language.
...
The modal option of CDC 6600 assembler programmers was like
PRINT NOGEN. Registers were reserved symbols and the hardware
was such that it was more evident than in HLASM whether a
macro argument was an address or a register reference.
And another where a literal might be a sequence of instructions,
an alternative to many uses of LOCTR.
And a compiler where macros were like SETC symbols, but with
arguments. And, yes, supporting conditionals and loops.
But *not* GOTO.
--
gil
