Why “preprocessor” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
I do not think functions in CSS are the original sin. Why we don’t have them, was a valid question in the 90ies already. And you cannot emulate functions by using a preprocessor…
by slow_typist · Oct 21, 2026
Right, you can work around it with things like this, but it means you’re forcing the C compiler to parse a compound literal just to get its length, 5 times! when the preprocesso…
by david2ndaccount · Oct 19, 2026
> If the compiler supports "-E", there absolutely is some equivalent of the expanded text, with (somewhat limited) whitespace info available: if you insert whitespace into betwe…
by david2ndaccount · Oct 18, 2026
> There is no “expanded text”, only expanded tokens. If the compiler supports "-E", there absolutely is some equivalent of the expanded text, with (somewhat limited) whitespace…
by Joker_vD · Oct 18, 2026
Interesting, reminds me of the Stroop test where people have to say what color a word is written in, except the word is "red" and the color is blue. I wonder if a sufficiently s…
by orangecat · Oct 18, 2026
During translation of source text to a C program, the source text goes through several phases. It turns raw bytes into preprocessor tokens, then preprocessor tokens get expanded…
by david2ndaccount · Oct 18, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "preprocessor" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "preprocessor" over time.
In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input in another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by some subsequent programs like compilers. The amount and kind of processing done depends on the nature of the preprocessor; some preprocessors are only capable of performing relatively simple textual substitutions and macro expansions, while others have the power of full-fledged programming languages. Read more on Wikipedia