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From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: BNF for LISP
Message-ID: <556@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-Nov-85 17:52:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.556
Posted: Sat Nov 23 17:52:48 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Nov-85 11:11:19 EST
References: <771@bu-cs.UUCP> <2289@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 11


In my previous posting about the reason that a parser must know about
read macros, I meant to also mention that a parser must also know about
the SETSYNTAX functions.  Using this, a programmer can reprogram the
meaning of any character.  Thus, I could tell the reader to treat any
character as equivalent to parentheses, the cons dot, quote, etc.  The
BNF cannot take this into account.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar