Re: Writing A Plain English Compiler

"Joshua Cranmer p'" <Pidgeot18@verizon.net> wrote in message
> On 11/4/2014 3:50 PM, Gerry Rzeppa wrote:


> The syntax seems to be what you are most proud of, but I rather suspect
> that most of the people in this group don't care too much about
> syntax.


Actually, some of us are fussy about syntax, but while we might prefer
something less terse than C++, it's not necessary to go as far as something
that can be mistaken for English.


About a year ago, I had an experimental project where I could write code in
my own preferred syntax, and it would translate it to one of a number of
well-known languages.


It worked up to a point (I wrote some small benchmarks that were translated
to C, Python, Lua, Lisp and one or two others. In some simple cases, exactly
the same code would work unchanged on a number of different targets). But
you still had to be aware of the different capabilities of each target. In
the end, I preferred to create a proper language of my own (two in fact).


It shows however that syntax is not that important. Well, provided it's not
totally crazy, and that some agreement is reached as to what is allowed
(otherwise no one can understand anyone else's code).


Technically, it wouldn't be a problem to allow a small number of different
styles (eg. C, Algol, Python, Lisp, maybe even Plain English) and use that
style across all languages instead of needing to switch.


--
Bartc

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