Preprocessor

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Preprocessor
 

The preprocessor is executed at translation phase 4, before the compilation. The result of preprocessing is a single file which is then passed to the actual compiler.

Directives

The preprocessing directives control the behavior of the preprocessor. Each directive occupies one line and has the following format:

  • # character
  • preprocessing instruction (one of define, undef, include, if, ifdef, ifndef, else, elif, elifdef, elifndef (since C23), endif, line, embed (since C23), error, warning (since C23), pragma) [1]
  • arguments (depends on the instruction)
  • line break

The null directive (# followed by a line break) is allowed and has no effect.

Capabilities

The preprocessor has the source file translation capabilities:

  • conditionally compile of parts of source file (controlled by directive #if, #ifdef, #ifndef, #else, #elif, #elifdef, #elifndef (since C23) and #endif).
  • replace text macros while possibly concatenating or quoting identifiers (controlled by directives #define and #undef, and operators # and ##)
  • include other files (controlled by directive #include and checked with __has_include (since C23))
  • cause an error or warning (since C23) (controlled by directive #error or #warning respectively (since C23))

The following aspects of the preprocessor can be controlled:

Footnotes

  1. ↑ These are the directives defined by the standard. The standard does not define behavior for other directives: they might be ignored, have some useful meaning, or make the program ill-formed. Even if otherwise ignored, they are removed from the source code when the preprocessor is done. A common non-standard extension is the directive #warning which emits a user-defined message during compilation. (until C23)

References

  • C17 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2018):
  • 6.10 Preprocessing directives (p: 117-129)
  • C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):
  • 6.10 Preprocessing directives (p: 160-178)
  • C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):
  • 6.10 Preprocessing directives (p: 145-162)
  • C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):
  • 3.8 PREPROCESSING DIRECTIVES

See also

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