Usability advice to compiler/interpreter authors

Compiler/interpreter authors, please give us users analysis-time
access to version, platform, and invocation data (especially the
first of these). I'll illustrate with an example: a C compiler
should always insert some default values in its table of manifest
constants, so that developers can write


#ifdef VERSION1_0
hand_coded_exception_mechanism()
#endif
#ifdef VERSION1_1
more_standard_approach()
#endif
...


Analogous facilities would help particular instance of Scheme, BASIC,
... interpreters and FORTRAN, Ada, ... compilers.


I don't have any interesting theory to accompany this plea; I
don't think there's a single intellectually profound problem this
solves. However, facilities like this make an enormous difference
to us working developers out in the real world.
--


Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird@Neosoft.com +1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com +1 713 996 8546 FAX
[A counter theory decries bushy ifdefs as making reliable code much harder
to write. I have sympathy for both camps. -John]
--

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