Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use?

Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net>
Sat, 3 Dec 2022 22:16:44 +0100

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4@u.washington.edu (gah4) (2022-12-01)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4@u.washington.edu (gah4) (2022-12-02)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? tkoenig@netcologne.de (Thomas Koenig) (2022-12-03)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? DrDiettrich1@netscape.net (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2022-12-03)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com (Christopher F Clark) (2022-12-03)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4@u.washington.edu (gah4) (2022-12-03)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com (Keith Thompson) (2022-12-06)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4@u.washington.edu (gah4) (2022-12-06)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (2022-12-07)
Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? DrDiettrich1@netscape.net (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2022-12-07)
[5 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2022 22:16:44 +0100
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 22-12-001 22-12-003
Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="30373"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords: syntax, design
Posted-Date: 03 Dec 2022 17:52:14 EST
In-Reply-To: 22-12-003

On 12/3/22 11:25 AM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> schrieb:


>> One feature that I find makes them easier to use, and harder to
>> implement, is no reserved words.
>
> I think this is more a matter of extensibility than of ease of use,
> but both are somewhat intertwined.
>
> Adding a new reserved word is a breaking change, especially if that
> word is often used. See "new" in C++, which was something reasonable
> to use in C, and is reserved in C++.


IMO C basic syntax is a bad base. As long as declarations and
expressions can be distinguished only by the type of an identifier (type
name or variable name) it's not a good idea to add new keywords that can
be confused with variable or type names. Instead weird constructs like
"long long" for int64_t have been introduced, while "int int" stays
equivalent to "int".


DoDi



Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.