Re: PDD: Conventions and Guidelines for Perl Source Code

[Jarkko Hietaniemi]

> No, that's not the point of macros. When you find you have 5, or 10, or 20 
> levels of substitution, it means you have a real problem somewhere. Macros 
> should be simple. Fancy macros, or lots of little nested macros, show a 
> lack of thought about the long term. It also contributes really badly to 
> comprehending the code, and it gets in the way of stepping through 
> intelligibly with a source-level debugger.

I would say 'getting in the way' is putting a friendly face on it.
Nothing is what it looks like, starting from most of the function
names.

A quick test on pp.c shows that the code expands about twice the size
(this *without* the #include preludes, which includes also the system
headers, which wouldn't be that fair a comparison, but in case someone
wants a figure for that, the factor with those is 3.)

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen