Re: compiler for Chinese development language

> "Ganny" <sgganesh@gmail.com> wrote:


>>Ok, one basic question. Why is that the programming languages (like
>>C++) have reserved keywords in English? Why not some other
>>language/alternative?


Note that some languages have no reserved words, though that isn't
really what you were asking...


And our moderator wrote:


>>[Historically, modern software development started in the US and UK, where
>>people speak English. At least as far back as the early 1960s there were
>>versions of programming languages with the keywords other languages, but
>>they never caught on. A compiler doesn't care of an "if" keyword is
>>the two letters IF or SI or the Chinese equivalent, after all. -John]


Either the C or PL/I preprocessor could easily substitute keywords.
For other languages it could be done with an external preprocessor,
similar to those used for extending/modernizing languages such as
RATFOR and MORTRAN.


I have seen C code with


#define BEGIN {
#define END }


The intent to make C look more like Pascal.


Doing it with a preprocessor would allow one to send the processed
version to someone else who understands a different language.


Even with the keywords in english, one can still use other languages
for identifiers such as variable names. Java allows unicode for
identifiers. One could write wrapper classes to allow class and
method names in a different language.


-- glen

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