Re: Languages: The Bigger the Uglier (was: Re: Aliasing in ISO C)

In article 96-02-304 k2consult@aol.com (K2 Consult) writes:


      Actually, there is at least one language I know of that implements
      plug-ins (after a fashion), and that is everybody's "favorite",
      Forth. With its notions required word sets and optional word sets, it
      achieved something very like the modern craze for "plug-ins".


How about another one---Tcl? in Tcl a construct like 'while cond
{code}' syntactically is just three strings; you can define a new
procedure fromOneUpTo that would be called as


    fromOneUpto 100 i {
        doSomethingTO $i
    }


You can also redefine builtins like 'while' (for instance, so that
'while {code}' is equivalent to 'while true {code}'). Not that I think
it is a good idea...
--
przemek klosowski (przemek@nist.gov)
Reactor Division (bldg. 235), E111
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA


(301) 975 6249
[Gad, the circle of reincarnation comes around again. Extensible languages
were trendy in the early 1970s, but faded as people realized that if you
extended them much, they became totally unreadable. -John]
--

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