Fun Extending the C Preprocessor

Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by HexDecOctBin on Sunday October 18, 2026 @04:34AM (#50139148)

Has anyone tried to extend the C Preprocessor to be a fully turing complete language (perhaps something like Snobol) to allow for Terra like meta-programming?

(I am not talking about metalang99 or Cello like stuff, which exploits the Turing tarpit of the currently specified preprocessor but rather tasteful additions to the preprocessor itself).

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by camel-cdr on Sunday October 18, 2026 @07:44AM (#50140201)

The C preprocessor is practically turing complete, in the same sense that C it self or your computer is practially turing complete, but not strictly.

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by 0c3ca83 on Sunday October 18, 2026 @06:26AM (#50139739)

C++ started as a preprocessor.

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by tambourine_man on Sunday October 18, 2026 @07:22AM (#50140042)

So did Objective-C

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by cowlevel on Sunday October 18, 2026 @08:51AM (#50140662)

but not the C preprocessor, but a completely different preprocessor.

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by HexDecOctBin on Monday October 19, 2026 @11:54PM (#50161166)

I asked for tasteful additions :)

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Re:Fun Extending the C Preprocessor by david2ndaccount on Sunday October 18, 2026 @07:27PM (#50146549)

We’ll get there in this series.

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