Re: Now, to try again...

On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Dan Sugalski wrote:

> For my part, at least, I've been thinking of something either LISP-ish
> or very simple parameter setting/checking (like stuff in, say, your
> average .rc file with a little control flow thrown in) when it's
> brought up.  Occasionally things FORTHish, but only when I really
> desperately need sleep. :)

Sounds like Scheme and TCL to me.  Ok, it's a bit of stretch from .rc to
TCL but not too far!

> It is sort of a language design issue, but in many ways it depends on what
> sort of facilities we can provide with reasonable cost.

I really don't see why we can't provide hooks to be used by entirely
separate parsers.  To my mind it's *more* expensive to try to support
other syntax's in the main parser than it is to just call out to
external per-syntax parsers.  Sure, the person doing the parser for a
given language will have to write a new parser, but is there really much
hope that we're going to relieve them of that task?

> Nope, not bytecode--a syntax tree. (Though it could go the whole bytecode
> route if it wants, I suppose) Going full bytecode's not necessary.

Good point.

-sam