Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators

hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (John Hagerman)
Mon, 10 Oct 1994 16:12:39 GMT

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators heronj@smtplink.NGC.COM (John Heron) (1994-10-05)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators andand@csd.uu.se (Anders Andersson) (1994-10-06)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators leichter@zodiac.rutgers.edu (1994-10-06)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators morrison@hal.cs.uiuc.edu (1994-10-07)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators johnl@cs.indiana.edu (John Lacey) (1994-10-10)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (1994-10-10)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators wrs@apple.com (Walter Smith) (1994-10-10)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators cef@geodesic.com (Charles Fiterman) (1994-10-11)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators pardo@cs.washington.edu (1994-10-11)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators johnl@cs.indiana.edu (John Lacey) (1994-10-12)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (1994-10-14)
Re: Why separate Lexical & Parser Generators adrian@platon.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk (1994-10-21)
[1 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: hagerman@ece.cmu.edu (John Hagerman)
In-Reply-To: "John Lacey"'s message of Mon, 10 Oct 1994 03:33:18 GMT
Keywords: parse, design
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
References: 94-10-028 94-10-058
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 16:12:39 GMT

morrison@hal.cs.uiuc.edu (Vance Morrison) writes:
>Another problem is dealing with comments because they can occur ANYWHERE.
>This can be solved by simply restricting where comments can go (which may
>not be a bad idea in any case).


I disagree, for what is a gross but realistic reason. When comments can
go anywhere it is really easy to extend the language. Obviously, such
extension should not occur in any production environment (smiley goes here
-- c.f. Pascal 6000). But when doing *research* it is nice to (1) have a
well-established language with a real compiler etc, and (2) still be able
to extend the language. Pragmas are not sufficient, since the language
designer can't predict what kind of extensions *I* may want. If it
weren't for free-ranging comments in the language I am currently working
with, my research would have been *much* harder.


~ John
--

Post a followup to this message

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