On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:09 PM, David Gamey <[email protected]> wrote:
> Beyond the acknowledgment that part of the code is a kludge and the desire > to better integrate with the rest of the language. Has the > problem/challenge been defined in a bit more detail? > I don't actually acknowledge or accept the notion that Sudarshan's thesis work is a kludge. But it was subject to the same criticism that patterns in Snobol4 received: it was a separate sublanguage residing within a host language, something which Icon "fixed" via string scanning. In any case, we have an Snobol4-like pattern type, where the patterns are data values, are composable to form larger patterns, and can evaluate certain expressions at certain points (mainly, assigning variables to hold substring pieces that were matched) during a pattern match. It is at present independent of the string scanning control structure which was invented to expose and generalize certain internal mechanisms of pattern matching, namely generators and goal-directed evaluation. What we want is a integration of these two mechanisms. Patterns should be usable in the middle of string scanning, rather than be a separate mechanism. For reference, Sudarshan's thesis is at http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~sgaikaiw/Thesis.pdf. Some interesting comments by Steve Wampler, with responses from me, are at http://www2.cs.uidaho.edu/~jeffery/unicon/pattern-sbw.html. That conversation is now somewhat dated, but still may provide some useful context for the conversation. Clint
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