31 Jul
2010
31 Jul
'10
5:37 p.m.
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:48:29 pm Frank Heckenbach wrote:
A typical example for me is BP (or then, TP) that was written, for all we know, with a parser hand-written in assembler. They designed some problematic syntax, worst of all "^C" style character constants. A parser generator would have told them right away that they cause serious problems (and thus were a bad idea). Writing a parser by hand doesn't tell you so, so they happily added them, probably not even noting that their own new feature didn't work in many cases because they had not thought of them.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "^C" style constants, or why they are a bad idea. Can you explain please?
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Steven D'Aprano