Best of show: <hpfclg!neutron> Jack Applin

    	Jack Applin
	Hewlett-Packard
	3404 E. Harmony Rd
	Ft. Collins, CO 
	80525 
	USA

Compile and execute with no argument, if you can!

This entry is by far the most unusual abuse of the C preprocessor that
we have received thus far.  Nearly all of the real work is done in the
preprocessor!

When we compiled applin.c on an Amdahl 5890-300E, we found that it
spent over 75 minutes in the System V C preprocessor!  Besides showing
that the standard System V cpp is slow, it showed that it contained a
memory usage problem.  The applin.c only uses 29 different preprocessor
symbols (besides <stdio.h> and yet the preprocessor ran out of space!

The GNU C preprocessor took less than 45 seconds to perform the 2nd pass 
on the Amdahl 5890-300E.  But due to the ANSI-ness of GNU cpp (v.  1-21), 
it was not able to cleanly substitute a symbol that began with a '#'.
Clearly the GNU C preprocessor is faster.

A smaller version of applin.c can be found in zsmall.c.  Your machine
may have an easier time with this program.  See the Makefile for details.
