[Info-Ingres] Ingres ABF 4GL macros

[Karl & Betty Schendel]

At 3:38 AM +0000 5/24/07, Paul M. via DBMonster.com wrote:
>hi all,
>
>I a previous job I had at an Ingres site, in the 4GL code we use to put one
>line macro labels that were expanded out to several lines of common code,
>that would be visible in the final object code.
>
>Being a raw graduate at the time, I didn't take much notice, but I am now
>wondering how that was actually accomplished?

One way to do it is to rename $II_SYSTEM/ingres/bin/oslsql to
something like oslsql.real, and make oslsql be a shellscript
that runs the 4GL source code through a macro expander like
cpp or m4.  That's brute force, and you need to temporarily
put things back when you apply Ingres upgrades and patches;
but it does work very well.  That's how we used to do it
at Telesis, years ago.

Karl