"Paul D. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm interested even in compilers that might have shipped prior to the > last decade, if they're used, but I'm not interested in compilers that > no one uses anymore for any practical work.
In that case, my summary in <http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2003-02/msg00145.html> should be pretty close to what you wanted. > being allowed to use #elif would be a HUGE benefit to simplifying the > GNU make code Most real C compilers had #elif support added in the late 1980s, as it was already in System V and was in an early draft of the C standard. For example Arnold Robbins added #elif to the 4.3BSD C preprocessor in 1986: <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=235%40mirror.UUCP> There was a serious bug in the 2BSD implementation of #elif that wasn't fixed until a couple of years ago; see <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=GL69vL.5Hr%40moe.2bsd.com>. However, GNU make can't possibly run on a PDP-11 (it's too large) so I wouldn't worry about that. > Without elif the logic gets _considerably_ more messy and difficult to > maintain. I'd use #elif, then. There's no practical reason not to, these days, and the maintenance advantage that you mention outweighs any potential disadvantages of not being able to port to a VAX-11/780 in some computer museum somewhere.
