Preprocessor/Compiler question

[ibm]

Is there a preprocessor directive or other means whereby you can get
the
compiler ( for some reasonable set of compilers ) to print a user
defined comment then continue at compile time when it reaches a given
point in the source.

#error will stop and print its location but I want to continue.

Doing something like inserting "#pragma pack(show)" at the point in
question produces the required result but as a warning.
I'd like not to have warnings if at all possible.

My application can take some time to compile and I'd like the users to
have some sense ( its an engineering tool rather than a consumer app )
of what is happening when they specify large and time consuming data
sets.
That way they won't be tempted to muck with normal processing.

I'm going to put a large type explicit warning about this in the FM.
But that, I'm afraid depends on the user actually RTFM.

Something on the lines of:

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

ADVICE: You have specified a large data set. <<<<<
ADVICE: This may take a while ( up to 5 minutes ) <<<<<
ADVICE: Go get some coffee and relax <<<<<

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Well, thats a little overboard but you get the idea...
IBM

[Victor Bazarov]

ib*@svpal.org wrote:

Is there a preprocessor directive or other means whereby you can get
the
compiler ( for some reasonable set of compilers ) to print a user
defined comment then continue at compile time when it reaches a given
point in the source.
[...]

Nothing in the standard language. Some compilers do implement
#pragma message
but that's compiler-specific, ask in a newsgroup for that compiler.

V

[Walter]

<ib*@svpal.org> wrote in message
news:11**********************@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...

Is there a preprocessor directive or other means whereby you can get
the
compiler ( for some reasonable set of compilers ) to print a user
defined comment then continue at compile time when it reaches a given
point in the source.

I think this is what you're looking for:

www.digitalmars.com/ctg/pragmas.html#message

www.digitalmars.com free C, C++, D compilers

[ibm]

#pragma message("say what you mean" [__MACRO__] )

Turns out its an ANSI thing.
Don't know how I managed to miss that unless it was trying ( as usual )
to do too many htings at once.

IBM