[TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code

Rudi Blom rudi.j.blom at gmail.com
Tue Jan 10 14:40:47 AEST 2017


>Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2017 08:45:47 -0700
>From: arnold at skeeve.com
>To: rochkind at basepath.com
>Cc: tuhs at tuhs.org
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix stories, Stephen Bourne and IF-FI in C code
>Message-ID: <201701091545.v09FjlXE027448 at freefriends.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>I remember the Bournegol well; I did some hacking on the BSD shell.
>
>In general, it wasn't too unusual for people from Pascal backgrounds to
>do similar things, e.g.
>
>        #define repeat          do {
>        #define until(cond)     } while (! (cond))
>
>(I remember for me personally that do...while sure looked weird for.
>my first few years of C programming. :-)
>
>(Also, I would not recommend doing that; I'm just noting that
>people often did do stuff like that.)

When the Philips computer division worked on MPX (multi-processor
UNIX) in late 80tish they had an include file 'syntax.h' which did a
lot of that Pascal-like mapping.

Here part of it:

/* For a full explanation see the file syntax.help */

#define IF		if(
#define THEN		){
#define ELSIF		}else if(
#define ELSE		}else{
#define ENDIF		}
#define NOT		!
#define	AND		&&
#define	OR		||
#define CASE		switch(
#define OF		){
#define ENDCASE		break;}
#define WHEN		break;case
#define CWHEN		case
#define IMPL		:
#define COR		:case
#define BREAK		break
#define WHENOTHERS	break;default
#define CWHENOTHERS	default
#define SELECT		do{{
#define SWHEN		}if(
#define SIMPL		){
#define ENDSELECT	}}while(0)
#define SCOPE		{
#define ENDSCOPE	}
#define BLOCK		{
#define ENDBLOCK	}
#define FOREVER		for(;;
#define FOR		for(
#define SKIP
#define COND		;
#define STEP		;
#define LOOP		){
#define ENDLOOP		}
#define NULLOOP		){}
#define WHILE		while(
#define DO		do{
#define UNTIL		}while(!(
#define ENDDO		))
#define EXITWHEN(e)	if(e)break
#define CONTINUE	continue
#define RETURN		return
#define GOTO		goto



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