Top 10 Language Constructs

[Bruno has sent this message to comp.lang.* for many popular languages,
so I thought I'd respond here]


This information is easily extracted from a parser that counts
constructs. I was fiddling with Java, so I thought I'd count
constructs there to get an idea. I did this to jtree.java from the
JDK.


See statistics at end of message, but if you are looking for popular,
as lexemes, IDENTIFIER, '(' and ')' and ';' are the clear winners :-}


As "concepts", we can look at nonterminals (out of 11000 odd nonterminals)
337 Rule 172 executable_statement = expression_statement ';'
356 Rule 332 arguments = '(' ')'
405 Rule 239 access_path = access_path value_suffix
423 Rule 333 arguments = '(' expression_list ')'
423 Rule 335 expression_list = expression
474 Rule 111 type = name brackets
504 Rule 88 variable_declarator_id = IDENTIFIER brackets
515 Rule 133 block = '{' statement_sequence '}'
526 Rule 135 statement_sequence = statement_sequence statement_sequence_member
1473 Rule 77 brackets =


In spite of being to compute these statistics, I don't think they are
very interesting (except for biasing an automated error repair
facility). Rather, I think one should focus on the application domain
concepts.


--
Ira Baxter, Ph.D., CTO idbaxter@semdesigns.com 512-250-1018x140
Semantic Designs, Inc., www.semdesigns.com FAX 512-250-1191
12636 Research Blvd #C214, Austin, Texas 78759


----- Original Message -----
From: Bruno Gustavs <GustavsB@ch.sibt.com>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 3:44 AM
Subject: Top 10 Language Constructs (Fortran)


> What do you think are the top ten language constructs in Fortran ?
> Please don't answer in terms of concepts, but try to restrict
> yourself to those statements you really use to cope with your
> daily work.

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