Re: Languages that are hard to parse

Gene Wirchenko <gene@abhost.us>
4 Jun 2005 15:12:40 -0400

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
[11 earlier articles]
Re: Languages that are hard to parse dot@dotat.at (Tony Finch) (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse wclodius@lanl.gov (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk (Martin Ward) (2005-05-24)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse ralph@inputplus.co.uk (2005-05-26)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse hannah@schlund.de (2005-06-02)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse zvr@pobox.com (Alexios Zavras) (2005-06-02)
Re: Languages that are hard to parse gene@abhost.us (Gene Wirchenko) (2005-06-04)
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Gene Wirchenko <gene@abhost.us>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 4 Jun 2005 15:12:40 -0400
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 05-05-119 05-05-155 05-05-166 05-05-182 05-05-192 05-05-200 05-06-016
Keywords: parse, history
Posted-Date: 04 Jun 2005 15:12:40 EDT

Alexios Zavras <zvr@pobox.com> wrote:


[snip]


>Back in the era of '80s 8-bit micros with built-in BASIC, a difference
>of the Oric Atmos ("we use Microsoft BASIC!"), compared to other
>machines like Sinclair/Timex of the time, was that you could not use
>reserved words *anywhere* in your program (not even as part of other
>words).
>
>No much problem with RANDOMIZE, but you couldn't have a variable named
>"SCORE" because "OR" was reserved...


          That was true of version 4 but changed in 5.


          It did have some hilarity. Have you ever wondered where
off-by-one errors come from? Try:
                    print nothing
It will output -1 (assuming you have not already assigned hing a
non-zero value).


Sincerely,


Gene Wirchenko

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