> > [Aside: I would argue that the reliance of language designers on > > simple LALR parsers, etc., has significantly affected the > > development of > > languages. It has made them easier for computers to > > process but harder > > for people to use. I think that's backwards :-).] > > I agree, but even this message is a hard sell. At the JVM > Languages Symposium in 2007 the grammar people (Antlr - > Terry) and some others were in a discussion, focusing on > Ruby, that 'unexperienced' language designers produce hard to > parse languages. Some evidence that was brought in this > discussion is that after FORTRAN, languages tended to be more > regular and easier to parse (using generated code based on a grammar).
That's a different question, I think -- "hard to parse" in that context generally means "the specification is ambiguous" or "not well defined". In contrast, NetRexx syntax is very regular; it just cannot be parsed by a simple LALR parser without help. > This problem goes deeper when one realises that the grammar > for more 'regular' languages is actually easier on people. Same answer .. regularity (along with lots of other things, like few notations, readability, etc.) is what makes it easy for people, not how easy it is for the compiler/interpreter to process it. > Maybe it is time you focus on a better parser generator for > people to use? When there is nothing else to do, I mean ;-) Not an interesting project at the moment ... :-). Mike ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Oorexx-devel mailing list Oorexx-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oorexx-devel
