What is preprocessor in Java?

A preprocessor is a program that works on the source before the compilation . As the name implies, the preprocessor prepares the source for compilation. The notion of the preprocessor has been there from the earliest times of programming languages.

Java itself doesn’t support macros. On the other hand, you could pipe the source code through the C preprocessor (CPP for short) just like the C/C++ compile chain does.

Java doesn’t have a general purpose define preprocessor directive . private static final int PROTEINS = 100; Such declarations would be inlined by the compilers (if the value is a compile-time constant).18 Ara 2009