Re: Why context-free?

Darius Blasband <darius@raincode.com>
13 Oct 2005 20:40:14 -0400

          From comp.compilers
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Re: Why context-free? rfigura@erbse.azagtoth.de (Robert Figura) (2005-10-10)
Re: Why context-free? boldyrev@cgitftp.uiggm.nsc.ru (Ivan Boldyrev) (2005-10-10)
Re: Why context-free? dot@dotat.at (Tony Finch) (2005-10-13)
Re: Why context-free? nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (2005-10-13)
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Re: Why context-free? neelk@cs.cmu.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) (2005-10-13)
Re: Why context-free? darius@raincode.com (Darius Blasband) (2005-10-13)
Re: Why context-free? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (2005-10-14)
Re: language syntax design, was Why context-free? torbenm@app-2.diku.dk (2005-10-14)
Re: Why context-free? darius@raincode.com (Darius Blasband) (2005-10-19)
Re: Why context-free? nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (2005-10-19)
Re: Why context-free? nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (2005-10-19)
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[11 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |
From: Darius Blasband <darius@raincode.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 13 Oct 2005 20:40:14 -0400
Organization: [ posted via Easynet Belgium ]
References: 05-10-053 05-10-061
Keywords: parse, design, comment
Posted-Date: 13 Oct 2005 20:40:14 EDT

> Sorry, but I'm not impressed with Perl.
>
> - Bob
> [...
> Perl's syntax is gross, but it's the most productive language I've
> ever used, partly because of its nice complete garbage collected type
> system, partly because of the vast set of application libraries
> available. -John]




Shouldn't the question be whether it would have been possible to design
a language as productive as Perl, perhaps with a similar syntax in many
areas, but which would have been CF or even LL1 ?


We all know that some languages are not LL or not CF, but is there an
example, a feature that makes Perl special that actually *depends* on
the fact that it is or isn't CF, or LL ? I can't think of one, but I'd
be glad to be shown wrong in this matter.


Darius.
[Python has a much cleaner syntax than perl, but never got perl's critical
mass. I think this tells us that syntactic elegance isn't a big issue for
language users. -John]

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