3 ms·

It's a funny comment, but not really true. The ctangle program would just strip the comments (both C/C++ comments and TeX commentary) out of a .w file and re-a

It's a funny comment, but not really true. The ctangle program would just strip the comments (both C/C++ comments and TeX commentary) out of a .w file and re-arrange the C/C++ code to the order that the compiler would need to see it. While many other tools would leave tell-tale traces of machine-generated code, the C or C++ files generated by ctangle are really indistinguishable from human-written code, because they are the original human-written code. So Apple couldn't tell that you used Literate Programming, nor would it violate the spirit of the rules. Now I wonder how many people use Literate Programming to program for the iPhone. My guess is zero, which is too bad.

asimjalis 17y ago
It would not violate the spirit but it would violate the letter of the contract. Apple requires that "applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript" and CWEB is neither. Apple forbids literate programs -- only illiterate programs will be permitted in the App Store.
gjm11 17y ago
> the C or C++ files generated by ctangle are really indistinguishable from human-written code The C or C++ files are typically pretty easy to distinguish from code written by normal human beings (no comments, weird formatting, etc.; more ambiguously, LP tends to produce larger functions/methods because you can break things out as LP sections rather than using the facilities of the underlying language), but there wouldn't be any sign of that in the object code. (Not even the larger functions, necessarily, since the compiler could inline them.)