🚀 go-pugleaf

I think that a comment on language specifications that was made in SIGPLAN
Notices some years back is appropriate here.  Pascal and C appear to be
following similar paths as far as specifications go: initially there is
a short specification, full of holes.  Then, as people realize the pitfalls,
new standards come out that at least make the holes harder to find,
that are far longer, and that attempt to use the blunt instrument of natural
language prose to specify precisely.  (Can anyone look at the X3J11 prose
concerning "top type" and say that they know what is meant?  Should
printf("%05d", -3) print "-0003" or "000-3"?)

I wonder if someone who was around when the Algol 60 Report first came out
(and wasn't playing with blocks like I was at the time :-) would comment
on the initial popular reception of BNF; I suspect that it may well have
been similar to that which greeted van Wijngaarden grammars.  There are
texts that make v-W grammars understandable (McGettrick, and Cleaveland
and Uzgalis are the ones I know of); the technique of blind-alley
productions is straightforward.  I don't argue that Algol 68 is perfect,
but rather that it is far better specified than most other programming
languages.

		James Jones