Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!clarkson!ub!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dravido.soar.cs.cmu.edu!acha From: acha@CS.CMU.EDU (Anurag Acharya) Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional Subject: concrete syntax (was: "off-side rule") Message-ID: Date: 22 Jan 91 22:25:28 GMT References: <4842@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> Sender: acha@dravido.soar.cs.cmu.edu Distribution: comp Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 17 In-reply-to: db@cs.ed.ac.uk's message of 22 Jan 91 15:02:15 GMT It seems that in focussing on abstract syntax, folks designing lazy functional programming languages like Miranda and Haskell have pretty much ignored concrete syntax. I have heard the comment - "who cares about concrete syntax ? parsing is a problem of the 60s and 70s." Personally, I think that this is a rather callous approach since it pays little or no attention to the usability of the language. Attitudes like this result in anachronisms like the "off-side rule" and white-space significance hanging around long after the rest of the world has gone on. Great deal of attention has been paid to ensuring that the semantics of these languages is rigorously specified and "clean". I would expect that a fraction of this rigor and cleanliness would carry over to the specification of syntax. .... anurag