Re: A Readable C Code without #DEFINEs ...

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:01:26 +0000, Bahram wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I am using LEX and YACC and they produce this grossly unreadable C code
> that is infested with #define this and #define that.
>

So don't read it. It was produced for the compiler to read, not for
humans.

> The code is unreadable and I need to make changes to it for the
> particular project I am working on.
>

Hopefully the input files are readable, and you can change those.

If the output was a true one off, modifying it might be acceptable, but
that is a very rare case. Imagine if you modified the output and someone
else then changed the input files and reran lex/yacc. How would you fix
the resulting mess?

If you read up on lex/yacc you will probably find a way to get it to do
what you want. E.g. you can put in declarations of variables/functions of
your own at the top of the files and refer to them in rules later on.

> Is there a switch is C, or, if you know about a hidden switch in either
> lex or yacc, that would produce a final human readable code that I can
> make sense out of, PLEASE.
>

If you really want to eliminate the pre-processor parts, you could look at
your compiler documentation. gcc (and others IIRC)offer a -E switch to do
this. But it is unlikely the results would qualify as human readable.

HTH

Simon Bone
--
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