• Peter Alexander <peter.alexander.au gmail.com> Nov 14 2010
• BCS <anon anon.com> Nov 14 2010

Peter Alexander <peter.alexander.au gmail.com> writes:

Would it be theoretically possible to use string mixins, CTFE, and 
import expressions (using the -J switch) to write a function 
cHeaderInclude such that it may be used like:

mixin( cHeaderInclude( import( "someheader.h" ) ) );


I'm imagining that the cHeaderInclude function would parse the C code 
from the header, convert it to D declarations at compile time, and then 
returns those declarations to be mixed in, just like an #include would do.

Preprocessor defines could be handled with extra parameters: 
"SOME_DEF=1, ANOTHER_DEF=foo" etc.

Am I missing something that would make this impossible?

BCS <anon anon.com> writes:

Hello Peter,

 Would it be theoretically possible to use string mixins, CTFE, and
 import expressions (using the -J switch) to write a function
 cHeaderInclude such that it may be used like:
 
 mixin( cHeaderInclude( import( "someheader.h" ) ) );
 
 I'm imagining that the cHeaderInclude function would parse the C code
 from the header, convert it to D declarations at compile time, and
 then returns those declarations to be mixed in, just like an #include
 would do.
 
 Preprocessor defines could be handled with extra parameters:
 "SOME_DEF=1, ANOTHER_DEF=foo" etc.
 
 Am I missing something that would make this impossible?
 


That should be possible but would be highly complex. In effect you would 
 need to implement a large chunk of a compiler. Given that there is already 
a tool to do that offline (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/htod.html) it 
would, IMHO, be inadvisable.