2.8.5 Pragmas

A pragma is an arbitrary character sequence opened by <* and closed by *>. Pragmas can be nested and can extend over more than one line. Pragmas are hints to the implementation; they do not affect the language semantics.

We recommend supporting the two pragmas <*INLINE*> and <*EXTERNAL*>. The pragma <*INLINE*> precedes a procedure declaration to indicate that the procedure should be expanded at the point of call. The pragma <*EXTERNAL N:L*> precedes an interface or a declaration in an interface to indicate that the entity it precedes is implemented by the language L, where it has the name N. If ``:L'' is omitted, then the implementation's default external language is assumed. If ``N'' is omitted, then the external name is determined from the Modula-3 name in some implementation-dependent way.