From: David Garamond <lists@...6.isreserved.com>
Date: 2004-06-05T19:26:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Check assertion in Ruby

Robert Klemme wrote:
>>Is anyone using cpp (C preprocessor) along with Ruby? I've always wanted
>>to use it, but my laziness prevails everytime :-)
> 
> Aaaargh!  Even Bjarne would be glad of getting rid of this fossile and you
> walk around freely and try to get people to use it!  Get hold of him, arrest
> him, put him in chains...
> 
> :-))
> 
> Seriously, who needs CPP when there is Ruby?
> 
> def load_special(file)
>   if DEBUG
>     load file
>   else
>     Object.new.instance_eval File.read(file).gsub(/^\s*assert\b/m, '#' )
>   end
> end

I don't think preprocessing is obsolete as a concept. We can still do 
cool/useful stuffs with preprocessing, e.g. embedding license text, 
templates, obfuscation, adding/removing comments, removing debugging 
code, etc.

I still think preprocessing interesting because Ruby hasn't done 
dead-code-removal optimization like Python does (if __debug__: ..., 
IIRC, haven't touched Python in ages). And your example won't work with 
precompiled Ruby bytecode in the future :-)

-- 
dave