Re: Grammars for future languages

>what I have done with ReWrite to maintain _some_ consistency of notation,
>is that I have defined operation such as plus, not, etc. and effectively
>defined the infix forms as being equivalent to the prefix ones, so
>
>a+b is _exactly_ equivalent to plus[a,b]
>!a is _exactly_ equivalent to not[a],
>


Mathematica does this too. Mathematica language is very consistent in its
syntax. But it also has syntactic sugaring to make arithmetic expression
more 'natural'. It even has 'no-fix' notation for multiplcation. Thus
x y is _exactly_ equivalent to Times[x, y].
That looks okay.


Prolog (whose inferencing capability I would vote for inclusion in the
languages of the future) allows programmer to define infix and prefix
operators together with their precedence. With this feature, I can define
clauses/ ask queries like:
      list attribute of Something
      list children of Something
      Something has Parts
      etc
A carefully defined set of operators makes the code more readable (well,
only slightly more). But I think Prolog programmers do not use this feature
much as the conventional Prolog syntax feel so natural to them (my
experience, my opinion). Taste can be cultivated.


So I guess it is alright to sweeten the syntax. But careful. Don't overdo
it. Otherwise the future languages would be COBOL and more COBOL :)


Nor Jaidi jaidi@technet.sg
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