Comment Syntax
Henry Spencer
henry at zoo.toronto.edu
Sat Nov 17 04:20:18 AEST 1990
In article <I4=67D4 at xds13.ferranti.com> peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> ANSI's phases of translation require that backslash/new-lines be
>> processed BEFORE comments.
>
>Why?
>Makes sense for me for comment processing to come first, before
>anything else.
The intent is that it be possible to split lines mechanically, e.g. to deal
with machines with stupid line-length limits, and hence it is desirable to
have backslash-newline processing first so that you don't have to tokenize
the source to decide where line breaks are safe.
--
"I don't *want* to be normal!" | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Not to worry." | henry at zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
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