Re: Various syntax

[Manuel Giraud]

Evan Prodromou <address@hidden> writes:

> Well, I think you have some interesting points here, but I'm not
> entirely sure that I'm really into a Scheme that is a universal
> computer language creator. I kind of like R5RS + syntax extensions.
> 
> But you may be interested in some of the earlier ideas for Guile. One
> was a C-like syntax like the one you mentioned, called ctax. Another
> is Thomas Bushnell's work to make a Python interpreter on top of
> Guile.
> 
> This might be an extensible idea -- working with something like GNU
> Lightning or even the Guile VM. Anyways, if you're really
> interestested, searching on Google for those keywords might be a good
> starting point.
> 
> Me, I like parentheses.
> 

Well, I have to say that I like parentheses too : I don't want to use
guile VM with a C-like syntax (completely useless, if I want C I'll
use a C compiler). This is just an idea of what could be done with
syntax rewriting.

I'll look to the works your pointing, but the more I think about my
idea, the more I think it is a bit stupid. Imagine that each newly
defined syntax generate a lexer/parser for her. When someone enter an
expression, you can't decide which parser is good this expression
until you have *parse* it. So, I think that the solution is to try
each parser on the expression to find the good : a little bit weird.

Finally, as you're saying, Scheme is not a universal language creator
because language creation is not trivial and will hardly be done
automatically. 

-- 
Manu