Re: Using Bison and Delphi

"Mike Hahn" <mikehahn@rogers.com> said:
> I admit that my language might be hard to parse. If an open
> parenthesis followed by an object name is encountered, you don't know
> until reaching the close parenthesis what you're dealing with. One
> possible solution to that problem is using a colon (:) operator for
> method calls and a dollar-sign ($) operator for array references, and
> no operator for variable references.


Why screw up syntax for something that isn't a problem in real life?


FORTRAN has been doing parentheses for arrays and "method" calls since
the late 1950s. Ada has been doing it since 1983 (actually since
before that). LISP has been doing it forever. It ISN'T a problem in
real life.


FORTRAN arguably did it because they didn't know any better. LISP did
it because LISP does parentheses.


Ada, however, did it because they WANTED array references and function
calls to look the same, so that programmers could change between
function-driven code and table-driven code at will, without having to
change the source that called the function or decision table.
[Whether function calls and array references should look the same is
a purely religious issue. You are quite correct that the syntactical
issues are no big deal. And then there's C++ which panders to all
sides and lets you do it either way. -John]

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