Re: Languages From Hell -- your favorite one could walk again!

  Gary Merrill <sasghm@unx.sas.com> wrote:
>[suggestions for hideous old languages sought]
>Dare one nominate something like SGML?


adam@tucson.princeton.edu (Adam Justin Thornton) writes:
|> Huh? It's neither all that hideous, nor really obsolete. Unless I miss my
|> guess entirely, HTML is a DTD on top of SGML, isn't it?
|> It's certainly no worse than troff. And I was writing mainframe
|> documentation in a subset of it only last year.


Yeah? Then try to write a parser for it. Or just try to read Goldfarb's
book without getting psychotic and violent. Also, try reading the
comp.text.sgml group -- particularly the recent thread titled "SGML and
its enemies". Pay special attention to the various groups who think that
the language is (a) described by a regular grammar, (b) is LL(1), (c) is
LL(something else), (d) isn't LL(k) for any k, (e) isn't even LR(k) for
any k. I submit that *any* language that is the source of such confusions
among knowledgeable users and compiler writers is a language from hell. I
agree it's not obselete (though do note the mounting sentiment to flush it
and get on with a "second generation" language that at least has a clear
formal description). More's the pity.


--
Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, Compiler and Tools Division]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
--

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