Re: Syntax

"Eric A. Anderson" <ea08+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Thu, 5 Dec 1991 12:59:47 -0500 (EST)

          From comp.compilers
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| List of all articles for this month |
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: "Eric A. Anderson" <ea08+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Keywords: syntax
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 91-11-030 91-12-021
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1991 12:59:47 -0500 (EST)

salomon@silver.cs.umanitoba.ca (Dan Salomon) writes:
[stuff deleted]
> [...] In any case, infix is more concise than
> prefix since it usually requires fewer parentheses. [...]


I hate to nit-pick or anything, but that's not true, prefix and
postfix notation in and of themselves require no parenthesis if the
arity of your operators is known.


+ 2 * 3 4


Can be parsed by the obvious prefix parser.


5*(7+9) becomes:* 5 + 7 9


Lisp requires parenthesis, 1 - I suspect for consistancy, 2 - because
(+ 3 4 5) is a legal thing to add, and stuff like that couldn't be
handled without parenthesis or something like that.
                    -Eric the vaguely competent
--

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