I've seen a lot of weird preprocessor (ab)use in GNU code. The coreutils true/false (of all programs to invoke clever preprocessor tricks...) has this gem: in

I've seen a lot of weird preprocessor (ab)use in GNU code. The coreutils true/false (of all programs to invoke clever preprocessor tricks...) has this gem: in true.c (all told, an 80-line file): /* Act like "true" by default; false.c overrides this. */ #ifndef EXIT_STATUS # define EXIT_STATUS EXIT_SUCCESS #endif false.c, of course, contains only: #define EXIT_STATUS EXIT_FAILURE #include "true.c" On my current system, each of these represents a stately 27KB dynamically linked executable. By way of comparison, the OpenBSD version of true comprises nine lines with zero preprocessor directives: /* $OpenBSD: true.c,v 1.1 2015/11/11 19:05:28 deraadt Exp $ */ /* Public domain - Theo de Raadt */ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { return (0); }