On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 05:39:12PM -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> [We have FOO:BAR]
> While this is reasonably true (and reasonably reasonable) it's not entirely
> to the point. If we're going to provide a mechanism to define the syntax of
> a mini-language (or a maxi one, I suppose, though there are probably better
> ways to do it) then the details of colons and constants and what-have-yous
> are pretty close to irrelevant.
No, I don't think so. The whole thing rests on the fact that class FOO knows
how to parse string BAR. This, from the tokener's point of view, means that
class FOO has to tell us when string BAR actually *ends*. For complex BAR (and
complex FOO) this could be, uh, complex. It means that our parser would have
to call out to other routines - which can presumably be defined in Perl - to
assist in parsing Perl code. And hey, if BAR can be defined in Perl, it can be
defined on-the-fly. Oh dear.
Not impossible by any means, but *by no means* irrelevant.
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