Are preprocessors obsolete in modern languages?

Posted by Earlz on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Earlz
Published on 2010-05-30T21:38:41Z Indexed on 2010/05/30 21:42 UTC
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language-agnostic

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preprocessor

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Hello, I'm making a simple compiler for a simple pet language I'm creating and coming from a C background(though I'm writing it in Ruby) I wondered if a preprocessor is necessary.

What do you think? Is a "dumb" preprocessor still necessary in modern languages? Would C#'s conditional compilation capabilities be considered a "preprocessor"? Does every modern language that doesn't include a preprocessor have the utilities necessary to properly replace it? (for instance, the C++ preprocessor is now mostly obsolete(though still depended upon) because of templates.)

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