Filepp
filepp is a generic file preprocessor designed to allow the functionality provided by the C preprocessor to be used with any file type. It supports the full set of C preprocessor keywords (#include, #define, #if, etc.). filepp is also highly customisable and allows users to easily add their own keywords or modify the behaviour of existing keywords.
| Tags | Text Processing Markup HTML/XHTML |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPL |
| Operating Systems | OS Independent |
| Implementation | Perl |
Recent releases
- 07 Mar 2007 05:52
Release Notes: This release includes a rewrite of the processing chain so macros within macros behave correctly. Several other bugfixes and minor enhancements were made.
- 15 Jul 2003 05:55
Release Notes: This release adds support for processing multiple files at once, cpp style ## concatenation, improved control over processing routines, a full test suite, and several bug fixes.
- 18 Nov 2002 07:02
Release Notes: This release adds foreach loops, the defplus keyword, a cpp-style imacros option, support for variable number of arguments in macros, a macro prefix option, and many other minor features.
- 12 Jul 2002 05:09
Release Notes: This version adds a regexp module which implements a Perl-style regular expression search and replace. There were also other new features and minor bugfixes.
- 07 Feb 2002 05:56
Release Notes: This release fixes a minor bug in the processing of inputs to keywords such as #if and #for.
Recent comments
Re: I don't understand
> Why did someone feel the need to rewrite
> the C pre-processor?
CPP is not a good general-purpose macro processor.
The question is why would one reimplement m4?
E.g.
GNU m4 (www.gnu.org/software/m4/).
Re: I don't understand
The short answer is Perl. I wanted to write a generic file preprocessor which had a core set of keywords (same as cpp), but which was easy to modify and extend by adding further keywords. As I wanted to write the new keywords in Perl, it made sense to write it all in Perl.
Re: I don't understand
>
> % Why did someone feel the need to
> rewrite
> % the C pre-processor? There's
> nothing
> % preventing you from using the C
> % pre-processor on files that aren't
> C
> % sources.
> %
>
>
> cpp is designed specifically to
> generate output for the C compiler.
> Yes, you can use any file type with it,
> but the output it creates includes loads
> of blank lines and lines of the style:
>
> # 1 "file.c"
>
> Obviously these lines are very useful
> to the C compiler, but no use in say an
> HTML file.
>
> Also, as filepp is written in Perl, it
> is 8-bit clean and so works on any
> character set, not just ASCII
> characters.
>
> Filepp is also customisable and
> hopefully more user friendly than cpp.
>
If the output from cpp is not what's required,
why didn't you modify cpp slightly and provide
a switch to choose the new functionality, instead
of reinventing 95% of cpp again.
C-centricity
> % Why did someone feel the need to rewrite
> % the C pre-processor? There's nothing
> % preventing you from using the C
> % pre-processor on files that aren't C
> % sources.
> cpp is designed specifically to
> generate output for the C compiler.
> Yes, you can use any file type with it,
> but the output it creates includes loads
> of blank lines and lines of the style:
>
> # 1 "file.c"
>
> Obviously these lines are very useful
> to the C compiler, but no use in say an
> HTML file.
>
> Also, as filepp is written in Perl, it
> is 8-bit clean and so works on any
> character set, not just ASCII
> characters.
>
> Filepp is also customisable and
> hopefully more user friendly than cpp.
Also, I should point out that the C pre-processor is C-centric in other ways. For example, something like:
#if 0
"
#endif
is illegal and would cause cpp to choke. Everything must be made up of valid C pre-processor tokens, and " is not one of them (because it is an unterminated string).
Re: I don't understand
> Why did someone feel the need to rewrite
> the C pre-processor? There's nothing
> preventing you from using the C
> pre-processor on files that aren't C
> sources.
>
cpp is designed specifically to generate output for the C compiler. Yes, you can use any file type with it, but the output it creates includes loads of blank lines and lines of the style:
# 1 "file.c"
Obviously these lines are very useful to the C compiler, but no use in say an HTML file.
Also, as filepp is written in Perl, it is 8-bit clean and so works on any character set, not just ASCII characters.
Filepp is also customisable and hopefully more user friendly than cpp.
cabaret
06 Dec 2000 18:28
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