Re: Editing/storing syntax trees

To the general topic of this thread:
>> ... Wouldn't it be so much easier to store your source as a syntax-tree ?
Preston Briggs replies:
> I disagree. ASCII source is actually a fine representation, small and
> convenient. Syntax trees, on disk, are bulky and inconvenient.


Although I have for some time been a strong believer in storing syntax
trees, I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that ASCII is a better
representation. In any case, I'd like to mention a not-entirely-obvious
possible flaw to stored syntax. I was working with a theorem proving
system that allows the user to define structures and their syntax. In
the course of working on a proof, I was having the devil of a time on
a lemma that should have been obvious. The problem eventually turned
out to be that two expressions which printed identically were in fact
distinct structures. It is _vital_ that distinct structures display
in obviously different ways, and just as important that structures that
match produce identical displays. Once this requirement is accepted,
it becomes much less of a reach to say that source is ASCII rather
than syntax trees.


-Scott David Daniels
daniels@cse.ogi.edu
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