On 08/30/2012 05:15 PM, Alan Gauld wrote:
On 30/08/12 15:43, John Maclean wrote:
Thanks. This is a heck of a lot more clearer to me! BNF, huh? Another
set TLA that I don't need to know ;-)
Actually, BNF is one of those useful skills for any programmer because
almost every language is 'formally' described using it - at least
since the days of Algol, for which it was invented.
A simplified version of it is also used to define most command line
tools and their arguments so its definitely worth learning, at least
the basics. It can save a lot of typing when you want to precisely
specify the allowed grammar in a problem.
There are tools which can translate BNF like text into something close
to code, which is useful if you ever have to define your own
programming language. Admittedly not something most programmers ever
need to do, but it does happen occasionally that its the easiest way
to solve a problem. (The so-called mini-language design pattern)
My main issue is that I am a sysadmin and not a programmer. I am aware
of pydoc but not of BNF. So I was a bit taken aback when I saw the BNF
syntax. It was obvious to me that syntax of the try statements were not
python syntax but had no clue how to parse it. BTW - where in pydoc is
it mentioned, (or anywhere else for that matter), to refer to BNF?
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