Re: The impact of data format selection on application development

> The book shows how programs written in little languages such as AWK, Lex,
Yacc, pic (picture language), scatter (scatter plot language), troff, sed,
can be independently developed and assembled via pipes

I have quite an experience with yacc and highly disagree with its
classification as a "little language". One can only state this if they have
seen just a simplified example of a tiny LR  grammar and language that is
input to yacc.

Try it on anything real, like the XPath 2.0 grammar, consisting of 209
rules, and you won't ever make such a statement.


Thanks,
Dimitre

On Sun, Jul 10, 2022 at 5:22 AM Roger L Costello <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Recently I have been reading a wonderful book titled "Little Languages and
> Tools". Its authors are Jon Bentley, Brian Kernighan, Paul Hudak, and
> others. The book shows how programs written in little languages such as
> AWK, Lex, Yacc, pic (picture language), scatter (scatter plot language),
> troff, sed, can be independently developed and assembled via pipes
>
>               scatter infile | pic | troff >outfile
>
> Little languages provide a powerful way to quickly implement robust tools.
>
> Reading the book made me keenly aware of one thing: The XML data format is
> complex! Compare the densely written 36-page XML specification (plus the
> 16-page namespace specification) to this three-sentence specification of a
> data format:
>
> The data format consists of lines. Each line contains fields. Fields are
> separated by a delimiter (space, tab, comma, etc.).
>
> You might argue that such a data format is too simple to be useful. Not
> so! Much data may be expressed using that data format: a list of data about
> persons (name, age, gender). A list of data about aircraft in the Boeing
> inventory (model, weight, wingspan, max speed). A list of data about wild
> flora in the Amazon rainforest (species, size, lethality). A list of data
> about books (title, author, publisher). The types of data amenable to that
> data format is virtually endless. For data items that aren't in that
> format, there are tools available for putting them into the format.
>
> Simple data formats often spawn the development of powerful little tools.
> AWK is one such tool. With a line or two of AWK code you can quickly
> implement powerful data filters for transforming data in the above data
> format.
>
> What is the role of XML as a data format? What is the role of very simple
> data formats such as the one above? The answer is not clear-cut in my mind.
> What does seem clear, however, is that choosing the right data format can
> have a significant impact on application development - on the ease of
> development, on the cognitive load it incurs on the developer and
> maintainer, on the ability to create independent tools that can be
> assembled in a pipeline.
>
> "The important thing, as always, is to find a way of looking at the input
> data that makes it easy to lay out the program." ["Software Tools" by Brian
> Kernighan, p. 42]
>
> Comments?
>
> /Roger
>
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-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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