Re: Can syntax be enough? No need of semantics.

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote:
>
>You can use some formalism for something more powerful than
>context-free grammars to define all of the statically checkable parts
>of a programming language, e.g., a Van Wijngaarden grammar. However,
>that particular formalism has not caught on for specifying programming
>languages and even less for compilers.


Our moderator annotated another post in this thread with:


>[Good point. So why don't we use them? -John]


The particular problem with VW grammars is that they require quite a
lot of low-level machinery to express basic ideas. The grammar ends up
being an obscure implementation rather than a concise specification.


Tony.
--
f.anthony.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/

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