On 4 Jan 2017, at 15:02, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

What I'm proposing is almost exactly like Common Lisp's `#-` and `#+` (these use reader suppression, of course). Delving further into the realm of reader macros and other Lisp-like reader things is, I think, a mistake: the complexity of the reader is arguably a wart on the side of Common Lisp.

I kind of disagree about the CL reader in the context of CL, but strongly agree that such a thing would be a mistake for a C-family language. but yes, #+ & #- are what I'd like for a C-family language.

As you say statement languages make this a bit harder: I've never understood why anyone thought they were a good idea (I think a C-level expression-language ought to be reasonably easy to do).