NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/lang/c/13169

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-03 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!horse.ee.lbl.gov!torek
From: [e-mail] (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: string literal concatenation (was printf question)
Date: 3 Sep 1992 16:01:27 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Chris Torek)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.112.15

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Pat Rankin) writes:
>>Minor quibble:  string concatentation is performed by the compiler,
>>not the preprocessor. ...

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Murray Nesbitt) contends:
>Concatenation of character string literals is performed during the
>preprocessing phase of translation.

Both are technically wrong; someone else (I forget who) got it right.
Just for the record, the ANSI C standard (X3.159-1989) does not divide
the task of compilation into `preprocessing' and `compilation' phases
as such.  Rather, it lists *eight* separate phases.  Phase 4 might be
called the `preprocessing' phase, but the standard does not do so.
Syntactic and semantic analysis, which might be called `compilation',
is phase 7.  String literal concatenation occurs in phase 6.

Loosely speaking, then, concatenation occurs *between* preprocessing
and compilation, not during either one.

We now return you to your regular programming: megabytes of Unix- and
MSDOS-specific news inappropriately directed to a generic C group. :-)
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE ([phone])
Berkeley, CA        Domain:    [e-mail]