Re: deprecated GNU ## extension used

[Ulrich Drepper <drepper at redhat dot com>]

Neil Booth <NeilB@earthling.net> writes:

> > Zack, Neil, you have to remove this.  How else will you write
> > something like the `eprintf' macro from the manual?

And you haven't shown how to do it.  You simply effectively removed
the macro since its purpose was defeated.

> I agree with you that the alternative it not as convenient; my point
> was that it does exist.

How can you say it exists?  It didn't do what I want.  Just assume
that in this example I later want to add a filename.  This was another
thought while creating the macro.  With your "fix" I would have to fix
hundreds of places.

> You seem to agree with me that previous behaviour was too loose.  What
> you state above is not the documented behaviour of previous
> preprocessors.

Wrong and wrong.  The behavior is not too loose.  The syntax is
awkward but that's it.  It was chosen to not introduce another
syntactic token and it did so successfully.  And it is well
documented.

> I propose a compromise.  How about:-
> 
> i) The effect of pasting a comma and the placemarker token of a
> variable argument is a placemarker token.
> 
> ii) The effect of pasting a comma and any other token from a variable argument
> is the two separate tokens.
> 
> iii) For i) and ii) we only warn under -pedantic, otherwise we warn
> normally.

Why do you still want to change something?  Haven't you read all the
other people's mail?  Mine is not an isolated opinion.  You are
effectively removing a feature which is often use, well documented,
long-standing, and superior to other solutions.  Just because the
bozos in the ISO C committee did not care to look for prior art does
not mean we have submit ourself to their judgement.

Restore the old behavior.  There is no situation beside using
-pedantic where this should warned about and even then it must be
possible in system headers (at least).

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