Re: [stack] Stack Shuffling Operator Mnemonics

Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 1/9/07, William Tanksley, Jr <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Now you don't
> > > have to change the syntax of the language at all, which seems to be a
> > > huge plus.

> > Most consideration of languages breaks the syntax into two parts: a
> > lexer and a parser. The parser is the complex part. This change
> > addresses only the lexer.

> There is more to it than that, your proposed change would do more than
> simply add a new token to be parsed. You are effectively adding a new
> kind of expression. There would be several new grammar rules needed.

I would indeed agree with the goal of minimizing the number of types
of expressions in the language. I would balance that with the goal of
simplifying the number of things that have to be known in order to do
any work with the language.

It's definitely a balance, but I can't imagine any language for which
"a few dozen" additional library words (ignoring the words that some
users will try, but which won't be defined) outweighs a single new
expression type, when the two are a choice to do something that's done
in most definitions...

> > I also don't see how refusing to change a language's syntax is a "huge
> > plus". I don't even see it as positive -- lack of change is a zero,
> > not a positive.

> I'm just trying to say that when comparing the two design approaches
> for Cat, the simpler language design is far more favourable for my
> purposes.

Agreed. It IS very much a judgment call. I can see more complex
languages not having the ability to use lexemes of that form --
perhaps a language that already treats all the available separator
characters (we were using -) syntactically.

> Maybe the stack shuffling is a good direction for Joy. I can
> definitely see advantages though for other language designs. As I
> mentioned before I think a language with stack shuffling semantics is
> a great idea, especially for a higher level language than Cat.

Huh, I'd always thought that Cat was high level.

-Billy