> This may not be related to Icon at all (although I feel that Icon, ProLog, Simula and Beta are 'close cousins :) - but I have been fooling around with the idea of writing a parser in ProLog - I started out with something close to the grammar for 8086 assembly. Why? Because the syntax is simple, so syntax errors wont contain much information as to what the error actually is, but the semantics possibilities are enormous compared to, say, Pascal. Now, this is where I think it might be relevant: Wouldn't some kind of knowledge base help in producing more meaningful error messages? I have been through Icon enough to write small programs in it, and I had the same impression: The error messages really only say: "Error" - and you have to find the rest out for yourself. The case here about the [] could be added to the knowledgebase, so the next time, the error would be "I told myself I wouldn't use [] here!" :-)
> Any thoughts? Should I drop the idea of using an AI language to build an assembler?
(I actually wanted to use Beta)
Well, you could probably write the assembler to run on a Turing machine, too. That doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job.
For something that is so line-oriented as assembler language is, I'd think that either Icon or SNOBOL/SPITBOL would be relatively ideal tools for writing your assembler. Although you COULD probably write it in Prolog, I have to wonder if the benefits of making that choice are enough to justify the hassle.
Gordon Peterson
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