Re: Word For Today: “Uglification”

On 2024-03-12, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 12 Mar 2024 08:03:50 +0000, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>

That’s true, but AFAICT it’s exactly what Lawrence is complaining about:
there’s nothing in the language spec to help those thousand other
libraries avoid name clashes.

>
My specific complaint was about temporary names being used internal to
library macros. It’s a problem that is essentially impossible to solve
with string-based macro processors.

Firstly, C preprocessing is not exactly "string based" but token based.

A string or token based macro preprocessor could provide a way for
macros to obtain and use generated symbols (gensyms): identifiers
that are valid in the host language for variables and other uses,
but are uniquely generated within the translation unit.

Needless to say, the standard C preprocessing doesn't provide such a
thing, which is a problem.

But this issue independent of weaknesses caused by macro processing
being token or character based.  A structural macro preprocessor that
doesn't provide gensyms or any equivalent form of hygiene would have the
same problem.

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