🚀 go-pugleaf

RetroBBS NetNews Server

Inspired by RockSolid Light RIP Retro Guy

Article View: comp.lang.misc
Article #2789

syntactic extensions

#2789
From: David Gudeman
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 1991 14:52
26 lines
1538 bytes
In article  <1991Feb16.235050.8231@rice.edu> Preston Briggs writes:
]hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
]
]>What is needed in addition is a language which allows
]>the introduction of operator syntax according to the
]>user's desires.
]
]This is a hard thing.  People have been fooling with it for years
]and haven't gotten very useful results.  The Lisp community
](especially the Schemers) are probably the most advanced,
]but many people seem unwilling to accept the parentheses and other overhead.

I have to disagree.  I think the problem has been essentially solved
for Scheme and Lisp (with minor improvements still possible), given
that you are willing to put up with the syntax.  And for general
syntax the problem has been mostly solved by Prolog implementors, with
some minor caveats associated with finite look-ahead grammars.

You can't do it with (entirely) pre-compiled grammars like those
produced by yacc, but modern computer speeds make those superfluous.
Table-driven parsers with run-time modifiable tables are plenty fast
enough these days.
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman
Technical Details
Message-ID: <524@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!arizona.edu!arizona!gudeman

Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!arizona.edu!arizona!gudeman
From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: syntactic extensions
Message-ID: <524@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 91 14:52:49 GMT
Sender: news@cs.arizona.edu
Lines: 26