Use of punctuation in a language?

Herbert <hsauro@cs.caltech.edu>
31 Oct 2003 22:59:58 -0500

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Use of punctuation in a language? hsauro@cs.caltech.edu (Herbert) (2003-10-31)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? derkgwen@HotPOP.com (Derk Gwen) (2003-11-01)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? rosing@peakfive.com (MattR) (2003-11-01)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (Glen Herrmannsfeldt) (2003-11-02)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? joachim.durchholz@web.de (Joachim Durchholz) (2003-11-08)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com (Robert A Duff) (2003-11-08)
Re: Use of punctuation in a language? bear@sonic.net (Ray Dillinger) (2003-11-11)
[9 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: Herbert <hsauro@cs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 31 Oct 2003 22:59:58 -0500
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Keywords: syntax, design, question
Posted-Date: 31 Oct 2003 22:59:58 EST

Does anyone have any comments on the use of punctucation is a
language, eg, compare the following two approaches?


a = 3.4; b = 6.7;


or


a = 3.4 b = 6.7


which is better, ease of reading for humans, issues regarding design
of compilers (eg the punctuation-less version requires
look-ahead?). Perhaps lack of punctuation is a bad language design?


Any advice or comments would be gratefully received, I haven't seen
anything in the books one this, so was wondering what others thought?
We're designing a simple language for the exchange of models in
molecular biology, we have an XML based one, but know we'd like a
human readable one.


Herbert
[ Having used languages in which any string of characters is a valid
program, I can report that I vastly prefer languages with punctuation
because they make it harder to write a program that is syntactically
valid but doesn't mean what I wanted it to. It's a little easier for
compilers to parse languages with statement separators and explicit
brackets, but I don't find that anywhere near as compelling as the
human factors involved. -John]



Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.