[fpc-devel] RFC: changing conditional compilation

[Flávio Etrusco]

2010/2/9 Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be>:
>
> On 09 Feb 2010, at 01:24, Flávio Etrusco wrote:
>
>>> As far as I know, that's how macros behave.
>>>
>>> E.g.:
>>>
>>> {$macro on}
>>>
>>> {$define xxx:=1}
>>>
>>> {$if xxx}
>>> begin
>>> end.
>>> {$endif}
>>>
>>> If you undefine "xxx", you'll get a compile time error.
>>>
>>> Downside: they don't work with booleans for some reason, only with
>>> integers...
>>
>> Hi Jonas,
>> As you can imagine I'd prefer to "solve" the $ifdef "problem" ;-)
>
> To be honest: no, I can't imagine why you would prefer that.

Because everybody automatically uses $ifdef and most of the code would
work with minor intervention. E.g. we usually use something like
{.$define EnableDocking} to undefine the symbol. You'd just have to
force it explicitly $undef or some kind of {$define EnableDocking
disable} or 'false', or something.


> The entire
> difference between $ifdef and $if is that $if checks the value of something
> (and hence will give an error if the symbol is undefined) and $ifdef checks
> whether it is defined or not. As far as I can tell, you would simply like to
> be able to use boolean constants in $if expressions.

This would solve the problem for my code, not conditionals I'm trying
to use on 3rd party code...


>> Yes, I noticed the problem with bools - and that it would fail with
>> "string found but boolean expected" if the name was undefined -,
>
> The latter is the behaviour you want, no?

Yes - apart from puzzling error message to the casual users - but it'd
require to set a convention on the Macro value for on/off and back to
possibly causing errors due to typos.

> Jonas
>
> PS: please reply to the list_______________________________________________

Sorry, I just skip the list sometimes when I think the post will be
just noise to other people. I'd certainly get back to it when I have
something relevant to say ;-)

Best regards,
Flávio