Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:15:24 -0400

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
[7 earlier articles]
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs news@cuboid.co.uk (Andy Walker) (2014-06-29)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs gneuner2@comcast.net (George Neuner) (2014-06-29)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs ivan@ootbcomp.com (Ivan Godard) (2014-06-29)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs genew@telus.net (Gene Wirchenko) (2014-06-30)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs ivan@ootbcomp.com (Ivan Godard) (2014-06-30)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (2014-07-02)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs monnier@iro.umontreal.ca (Stefan Monnier) (2014-07-03)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs genew@telus.net (Gene Wirchenko) (2014-07-03)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2014-07-04)
Re: specifying semantics, was Formatting of Language LRMs DrDiettrich1@aol.com (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2014-07-04)
Re: Parsing Fortran, was specifying semantics gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2014-07-04)
Re: Parsing Fortran, was specifying semantics wclodius@earthlink.net (2014-07-04)
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:15:24 -0400
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
References: 14-06-010 14-06-023 14-06-025 14-06-027 14-06-030 14-06-031 14-07-003
Keywords: syntax, history
Posted-Date: 04 Jul 2014 00:57:11 EDT

> What is conventionally called "syntax" is an artifact of the compiler
> technology (or maybe of specification technology, see below):


I disagree here. It is no accident. Same as the split between
lexical and syntactic analysis, the division between syntax and
(static) semantics is an engineering issue: specifying a language is a
fairly large amount of work, so you want to split it into simpler
parts.




                Stefan

Post a followup to this message

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