Editing C preprocessor (section)

===Not general purpose===

The C preprocessor is not [[Turing completeness|Turing-complete]], but comes close. Recursive computations can be specified, but with a fixed upper bound on the amount of recursion performed.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://stackoverflow.com/a/10526117 |title=Is the C99 preprocessor Turing complete? |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424212425/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3136686/is-the-c99-preprocessor-turing-complete/10526117 |archive-date=2016-04-24}}</ref> However, the C preprocessor is not designed to be, nor does it perform well as, a general-purpose programming language. As the C preprocessor does not have features of some other preprocessors, such as recursive macros, selective expansion according to quoting, and string evaluation in conditionals, it is very limited in comparison to a more general macro processor such as [[m4 (computer language)|m4]].