Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!dwp
From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <551.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 25 Feb 90 01:08:06 GMT
References: <11558@nigel.udel.EDU>
Organization: Latest link in the ForthNet chain.  (Pgh, PA)
Lines: 28

In <11558@nigel.udel.EDU>, new@udel.edu (Darren New) writes:

>                                   However, in my language there are
> no parsers that cannot be overridden.  That is, to parse the language,
> each character is read and appended to a buffer. Then each entry in
> a "parse" array is called in turn. Once one of the entries recognises
> the token in the buffer, it outputs the object code for that token
> and clears the buffer.
Why aren't the parsers run in parallel (or to that effect?)  I take it that
the parsers don't have to emit anything if they don't want?  How do you 
do the equivalent of read-time-macros-or-functions?  (I don't remember my
lisp well enough, but something like reader macros) (or Forth's IMMEDIATE
words)

> I think that if you can't add new literal types, you don't have a 
> truely new language. To do this, you must be able to define
> internal representations of high-level structures in terms of low-level
> structures (like bit strings).
One of the nice things about Forth is that it is simple and transparent
enough to allow you to do just this.  You can rewrite the interpreter or
just NUMBER.


		-Doug

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