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Subject: RE: Another style question
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:32:51 -0600
Message-ID: 
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Thread-Topic: Another style question
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From: "Eric Lemings" <Eric.Lemings@roguewave.com>
To: <dev@stdcxx.apache.org>

=20
Another related question, not so much style-based though.

Why the parentheses around preprocessing symbols in an `#if defined
(FOO)`
directive but not in an `#ifdef FOO` directive?  Example:

	$ grep -n "^#if" $SVNROOT/trunk/src/exception.cpp
	...
	src/exception.cpp:303:#ifdef _RWSTD_NO_EXCEPTION_COPY_CTOR
	src/exception.cpp:307:#if defined (__INTEL_COMPILER)
	...

For that matter, why use parentheses in a if-def at all?

Brad.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Sebor [mailto:msebor@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Martin Sebor
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 1:37 PM
> To: dev@stdcxx.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Another style question
>=20
> Eric Lemings wrote:
> > =20
> [...]
> >> Btw., a more flexible way to code these workarounds would have been
> >> to code it like so:
> >>
> >>    #if !_RWSTD_NO_MEMBER_TEMPLATES
> >>        // correct code
> >>    #else
> >>        // workaround
> >>    #endif
> >>
> >> This way, each config macro could be #defined on the command line
> >> to 0 or 1 to toggle either branch (e.g., for testing and=20
> debugging).
> >> That's not possible with the #ifndef approach.
> >=20
> > From a natural language perspective, I've always found the double
> > negatives (e.g. `#ifndef _RWSTD_NO_FOO) a bit irritating but that's
> > just me.
>=20
> I don't like it either but I think it has two important advantages
> over the alternative (e.g., the GNU HAVE_FOO style). First, in a 100%
> conforming environment our convention makes it, at least in theory,
> possible to compile the library without having to configure it,
> while the other always requires the config tests, or will produce
> a badly crippled library when none of the config macros is defined.
> Second, our approach will end up with fewer #defined macros than
> the other strategy.
>=20
> Martin
>=20