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From: keith@gargoyle.UUCP (Keith Waclena)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: I Hate "Syntactic Sugar" (contrary opinion)
Message-ID: <560@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 02:53:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.560
Posted: Sun Sep 14 02:53:41 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Sep-86 18:51:07 EDT
References: <8900044@uiucdcsb> <598@watmum.UUCP>
Reply-To: keith@gargoyle.UUCP (Keith Waclena)
Organization: University of Chicago, Graduate Library School
Lines: 47
Keywords: applicative programming, functional programming


In <598@watmum.UUCP>,  gvcormack@watmum.UUCP (Gordon V. Cormack)
writes:

>[...] I do not claim that she is the originator, but I first saw the term
>used by Barbara Liskov in describing array subscripting in CLU [...]

I believe the term ``syntactic sugar'' was first used by P. J. Landin
in ``The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions'', _Computer Journal_,
6:4 (1964), 308-320.  Landin doesn't use the term at all
perjoratively.  He uses it to refer to notations that are more
readable than some lambda calculus notations.  For example, he
would describe the notation

	x * x
	where x = a * b + z

as a syntactic sugaring of

	(\x . x * x) (a * b + z)

(where ``\'' should be read as ``lambda'').

>There certainly exist more fundamental differences between notations
>than can be denoted "syntactic sugar".  The term should therefore
>be preserved to mean trivial syntactic transformations.

I think the term is most descriptive when one is referring to *any*
concrete syntax that could be used for a given abstract syntax.  In
this sense, all syntactic transformations are trivial.

Personally, I like the term.

-- Keith
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Waclena                       uucp:     ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!keith
Graduate Library School             CSNet:    keith@UChicago.CSNet
University of Chicago               Bitnet:   keith%gargoyle@UChicago.Bitnet

Disclaimer: Everybody around here thinks I'm crazy.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Waclena                       uucp:     ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!keith
Graduate Library School             CSNet:    keith@UChicago.CSNet
University of Chicago               Bitnet:   keith%gargoyle@UChicago.Bitnet

Disclaimer: Everybody around here thinks I'm crazy.