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Internet Message Format  |  1993-01-04  |  2KB
  1. Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Sat, 7 Nov 1992 16:17:48 MST
  2. Date: 4 Nov 92 01:10:54 GMT
  3. From: cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!mucs!m1!bevan@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Stephen J Bevan)
  4. Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
  5. Subject: readability of the algol68 report (was Re: confusing errors)
  6. Message-Id: <BEVAN.92Nov4011054@hippo.cs.man.ac.uk>
  7. References: <SPACKMAN.92Oct23174836@disco-sun6.dfki.uni-sb.de>
  8. Sender: icon-group-request@cs.arizona.edu
  9. To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
  10. Status: R
  11. Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
  12.  
  13. In article <1992Nov3.160646.21642@ips.cs.tu-bs.de> neitzel@ips.cs.tu-bs.de (Martin Neitzel) writes:
  14.    > it [the Algol68 Revised Report] isn't exactly very readable
  15.    Sorry, I just beg to differ.  Of course, you should read a gentle
  16.    introduction into two-level-grammars beforehand  (Cleaveland/Uzgaliz
  17.    excellent book on "Grammars for Programming Languages" comes to mind).
  18.  
  19. I beg to differ with your differing.  The method is certainly elegant,
  20. however I don't think it is particularly _readable_.  The implicationsw
  21. of the aliasing that can occur are quite subtle and it takes a _lot_
  22. of effort to follow them.  To me, van Wijngaarden grammars are a
  23. minimalist approach to defining a language.  A (probably bad) analogy
  24. would be using SKI combinators as your programming language,
  25. foundationally/theoretically very nice but a bugger to work with
  26. practically.  Give me a denotational or operational definition any
  27. day; they also have the advantage that they are easier to turn into
  28. interpreters/compilers.
  29.  
  30. bevan
  31.