Modula2's godawful IO.

[Duke Robillard]

In article <764 at ndsuvax.UUCP> ncreed at ndsuvax.UUCP (Walter Reed) writes:
>Here is an example of why these things bother me.
>	IF (x = TRUE) THEN
>		WriteString("Error #");
>		WriteCard(e);
>		WriteString(" in line #");
>		WriteCard(l);
>		WriteString(" detected.");
>	END;

I really like modula2.  It's probably my favorite language.  But
this WriteCard, WriteString stuff makes me want to pop someone in the nose.
It's as if someone told Prof. Wirth "heh, pascal's io is pretty bad, but
I bet you could make it EVEN WORSE."

I hate C as much as the next guy, but it seems to me that printf is
the solution.  Has anyone ever written some kind of front end for a 
modula compiler to turn printf's into WriteSh*t's?  It doesn't seem 
like it would be too hard, although you probably couldn't do it with a
macro processor like m4...could you?
-- 
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|       Duke Robillard
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