>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Akim Demaille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> - It does introduce some code duplication. > Yes, I think that's my biggest worry about this sort of thing. Yeah, I understand, and I share your concern. But in this case there is not too much duplication. > If the refactoring results in a real win that users can see > (support for Java, say?), then it might be worth this hassle; > otherwise, I'm not sure it's worth the bother. I have in mind the fact that Perl people complain that $ and @ have a hardwired meaning. But I'm not specifically aiming at this right now, it just seemed nicer to separate concerns. > M4 sounded like a nice idea at first, but in retrospect perhaps we > should have left well enough alone. People have submitted > replacements (one based on Python, another on Scheme) but I'm not > sure they're enough of an improvement to be worth the hassle. > Perhaps it'd be better to drop the postprocessor phase entirely; it's > nice in some respects, but I'm afraid it's turning out to be more > trouble than it's worth. I strongly disagree here. I agree programming with strings is hard enough, M4 managing to beat TCL on its own battle field on this regard, but returning to some ad hoc treatment would be a serious regression. We really want to be able to iterate, to change tokens, to generate function signatures etc. Having to perform that from the C engine is quite wrong IMHO.
