Guessing but...

Post #3,641 by Fearless Freep 8/2/01 3:48:52 PM Reply	Guessing but... I'm not saying that it might not be nice. I am just asking you to explain the reason you consider it to be important I suspect he thinks it will be easier to write a language parser that follows one basic syntactical idiom. If you can phrase x < 2 as cmp (x, "<", 2) than everything can be parsed as function (arguments) in a rather iterative fashion Jay O'Connor "Going places unmapped to do things unplanned to people unsuspecting"
Post #3,649 by ChrisR 8/2/01 6:09:41 PM Reply	I doubt it... I suspect he thinks it will be easier to write a language parser that follows one basic syntactical idiom. I doubt that for two reasons. First, Bryce has been vocal in his opposition to any language feature that is done for the purpose of making parsing easier. Second, I have my doubts about whether Bryce ever intends to write a parser, so I wouldn't think he's too concerned with parsing issues. I guess while we're on the subject, I might as well ask how the syntax lays out when the number of parameters is not 2. What does the syntax do when there is only a single parameter? What does the syntax do when there are three or more parameters? Haskell gets away with it by stipulating that all functions take only a single parameter. Additional parameters are Curried in functions that also take a single argument. Python, OTOH, always takes a single parameter, but the parameter may be a tuple which allows multiple parameter to be group together as a single parameter.
Post #3,689 by tablizer 8/3/01 1:40:15 AM Reply	not true >> First, Bryce has been vocal in his opposition to any language feature that is done for the purpose of making parsing easier. << Like I said before, this is only a proof of concept, and NOT a final version by any long-shot. >> Second, I have my doubts about whether Bryce ever intends to write a parser, so I wouldn't think he's too concerned with parsing issues. << That is what you guys said about a runnable SCGUI browser, and I made one. Anybody is welcome to try it. ( [link\|http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/scgui.htm\|http://www.geocitie...er/scgui.htm] ) >> I guess while we're on the subject, I might as well ask how the syntax lays out when the number of parameters is not 2. << I don't see why that would be a problem. x() x(p1) x(p1 p2 p3) (I wont go into named parameters here) ________________ oop.ismad.com
Post #3,692 by CRConrad 8/3/01 2:32:03 AM Reply	Yes, he's been vocal - but then, he wasn't writing a parser!
Post #3,739 by tablizer 8/3/01 12:54:34 PM Reply	A "walk a mile in another's compiler" argument? I still say that being programmer-friendly is more important than being compiler-friendly. However, a hobby test project does not have that luxury, and may have to bend toward keeping the compiler/interpreter simple at the expense of some syntactical niceties. IOW, you are comparing the standards for apples to the standards for orangees. If the early draft for PHB had dollar signs, that would not bother me because I would not use it at that stage. But BY NOW those fricken dollars should be long gone (except for embedding variables in strings, where they make sense). ________________ oop.ismad.com
Post #3,771 by tablizer 8/3/01 3:42:31 PM Reply	(addendum) BTW, I plan to incrementally extend the syntax to make it friendlier. The "base" may be purely function-based, but extended from there. One approach is to simply gradually add more complex syntax to the parser. Another is to have a pre-compiler convert the "friendly" version into the function-only version. I have not decided that yet which path to follow. ________________ oop.ismad.com

Welcome to IWETHEY!