A program that takes text and performs lexical conversions on it. The conversions may include macro substitution, conditional inclusion, and inclusion of other files. This can be used to write write platform-independant code by excluding source files that are not necessary on certain platforms without changing the build instructions.
An operation applied to program source before compilation. The generic preprocessor permits defining common code for multiple data types. xc is the preprocessor for converting SPP into Fortran.
A portion of the HP aC++ compiler that manipulates the contents of your source file according to the preprocessing directives coded in the source file.
A component of ALLBASE/SQL that converts an embedded SQL program into a source file for input to a compiler in one of four programming languages: C, COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal.
a program that examines a file for specific statements called "directive statements"
a text processing program that manipulates the text within your source file
a translator whose source language is an extended form of some high-level language and whose object language is the standard form of the high-level language
A processor typically used to reduce the amount of data to be processed in an application. This can be done by filtering out unwanted noise and/or signals in the preprocessor.
A program that runs before the compiler and which handles pre-processors directives. Preprocessor directives are given on lines begining with a '#' The most common preprocessor directive is "#include"
A processor which manipulates the initial directives of the source file which contains instructions about how the source file shall be processed and compiled.
A phase of the compiler that examines the source program for preprocessor statements, which are then executed, resulting in the alteration of the source program.
n. The part of a compiler (traditionally, a separate program; hence the name) which handles the #include, #define, #ifdef, and related directives, and performs substitution of #define d macros in the rest of the program source.
Software that takes a given source code and transforms it into an equivalent program in the same language. In theory, after compilation the transformed code should run faster than the original code--but this always happen in practice, so one should verify. A preprocessor tries to improve performance by applying a series of transformation rules designed to optimize loops based on the processor's cache size; minimize memory stride; perform loop unrolling; etc. Also called a precompiler.
In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to 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 fully-fledged programming languages.
