[erlang-questions] Erlang PP Question

[Richard Carlsson]

On 05/30/2012 12:11 PM, Kannan wrote:
> Isn't PP takes place before parsing? Isn't PP is simply a string
> replacement?

Almost - it's token level replacement (just as in the C preprocessor), 
and the splitting into forms is done before preprocessing.

    /Richard

> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Richard Carlsson
> <carlsson.richard@REDACTED <mailto:carlsson.richard@REDACTED>> wrote:
>
>     On 05/30/2012 11:26 AM, Kannan wrote:
>
>         Hi There,
>
>         If -define does just string replacement, why it does not let me
>         do the
>         following?
>
>         -define(Z, z() -> io:fwrite("z")).
>         -define(Y, y() -> io:fwrite("y")).
>         -define(X, ?Y. ?Z.).
>
>
>     In the last line, you have ?Y. followed by whitespace. This ends the
>     define declaration. Erlang source code is divided into "forms",
>     where each form ends with . followed by whitespace (usually newline,
>     but any whitespace or even a comment can be used). So you have two
>     forms at the end: '-define(X, ?Y.' and '?Z.).' and none of these are
>     syntactically valid. It is not possible to make a single macro
>     expand into two forms.
>
>        /Richard
>
>