Is this correct action for the c compiler/preprocessor ??

[John Mackin]

In article <270 at cornell.UUCP> jqj at cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson) writes:

> Most versions of pcc ignore stringness (``"'') when looking for tokens 
> for macro replacement.
> [ ... ]
> K&R are silent on the lexical issues involved, so this cannot be considered
> incorrect.

I couldn't let such a glaring misstatement pass.  Page 207, sec. 12.1:

	``Text inside a string or a character constant is not
	  subject to replacement.''

Disclaimer: I personally think that the book is *wrong* on this point,
as evidence the fact that DMR's own original PDP-11 C system did do
such substituion.  I take issue here only with the fact that Mr.
Johnson has misrepresented the book's position.

John Mackin, Basser Department of Computer Science,
	     University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

seismo!munnari!basser.oz!john	john%basser.oz at SEISMO.CSS.GOV