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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc.
From: |
Tom Lord |
Subject: |
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc. |
Date: |
Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:04:04 -0700 (PDT) |
> From: Colin Walters <address@hidden>
> On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 20:40 -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
>> set-in-version: (upstream "address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3")
> Or you might just say:
> X-Upstream: address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3
> No need for a language for this.
Oops... you are mistaken. You contradict yourself.
Answer me this.... Why is _this_ an example of a language in use:
set-in-version: (upstream "address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3")
but _this_ is not:
X-Upstream: address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3
It seems to me that you really wanted to say
We already have a langauge for this kind of thing. The language is
(roughly):
program := X-<name>: <value>
<name> := <alnum and some punctuation>+
<value> := <RFC822 header field contents>
For very simple settings, such as setting "upstream" to a
fully-qualified version name, that traditional language is, indeed,
quite ample.
What if, though, the value is supposed to be a list? Or nested
lists? or numbers? or a string that can contain arbitrary characters?
or a list of such strings?
What if the value of the variable isn't a constant but should be
computed in some way?
My issues with the traditional language you describe boil down to its
being too weak: it doesn't answer questions like those I've listed
above. At the very least we'll want to supplement that traditional
language definition with some additional rules. One rule might be:
* a list value is a white-space separated sequence of elements
That would be a lousy rule, of course, since it would mean that
elements may not contain spaces and since it would fail to permit
nested lists.
So: let's anticipate those kinds of issues -- note what kinds of
values we need and perhaps what kinds of computation -- and design a
set of those rules that actually works. That's what I've been engaged
in.
-t
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., (continued)
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Charles Duffy, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Colin Walters, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Talli Somekh, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., James Blackwell, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Pierce T . Wetter III, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Jeremy Shaw, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Jeremy Shaw, 2004/07/20
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc.,
Tom Lord <=
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Colin Walters, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Colin Walters, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Phil Frost, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Jan Hudec, 2004/07/21
- Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/21
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] new language, arch, furth, etc., Matthieu MOY, 2004/07/21
[Gnu-arch-users] Re: new language, arch, furth, etc., Tom Lord, 2004/07/20