[fpc-pascal] Get variable name at runtime

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2013, Marco van de Voort wrote:

> In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
>>>> Unfortunately pascal macro's are rather limited compared to C. I know I know, you could potentially open up a can of worms, but sometimes more control is required.
>>>
>>> There is nothing restraining anybody using an external macro processor. It
>>> is just that we don't want to support it :-)
>>
>> Actually, I'd suggest that there is: the difficulty of integrating an
>> external macro processor with the standard build process (i.e. it's not
>> just another stage in a makefile).
>
> It is. Export all known sources to a new dir for the compiler through the
> preprocessor.
>
>> I've had to deal with colleagues in the past who thought it was entirely
>> acceptable to make manual edits to compiler output (typically on Intel
>> blue boxes) before running it through the assembler, and it's very high
>> on my list of Thou Shalt Nots.
>
> General preprocessor usage is on mine. I use preprocessors and
> codegenerators all the time, and have no problem whatsoever with it.
>
> What I have a problem is, is to give that formal statement, so that future
> development on the compiler will be limited by it in all its gory glory.
>
> IMHO we should simply have a directive that is either cdecl or stdcall
> depending on the platform

+1

I proposed libcall about 10 years ago - if not longer. OSCall or NativeCall.
Whatever. Just not a macro.

Michael.