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Re: C-like identity?
- To: Ian Bicking <bickiia at cs dot earlham dot edu>
- Subject: Re: C-like identity?
- From: Ian Grant <Ian dot Grant at cl dot cam dot ac dot uk>
- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 09:23:07 +0100
- cc: guile at sourceware dot cygnus dot com, Ian dot Grant at cl dot cam dot ac dot uk
> Anyway, my project is having an identity crisis and I thought I'd ask
> a bit of advice. First, all I can think of calling it is C-like-syntax,
> which is true but not a good name. It's not quite JavaScript-like
> enough to call it JavaScript->Scheme. I don't know what it is. I
> could call it Fred, but then no one would know anything about it by
> looking at its title.
How about calling it B or D. Then people will guess it's something to do with
C. (But I think one of the C predecessors was called B wasn't it?)
> Also, there's a bunch of non-C syntax things that I don't currently
> have a thoughtful opinion on, and I'd like some help on that. I'd like
> the syntax to allow just about everything Scheme normally allows. But
> there's no model for a lot of them in C.
You need some rationale for deciding what sort of syntax to use. If you adopt
the policy that this language 'D' is meant to let people boot-strap themselves
into proper scheme programming then you should choose syntactic constructs
that will be easy to translate to scheme. So that someone who has learned D
will recognise lots of scheme when s/he sees it. So choose list(1 2 3) rather
than list(1, 2, 3) or #{1, 2, 3} because list(1 2 3) => (list 1 2 3) is
easiest.
Of course you could choose the opposite: to make 'D' look as little like
scheme as possible, but I don't see why anyone would want to do that :-)
Ian
--
Ian Grant, Computer Lab., New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge
Phone: +44 1223 334420 Personal e-mail: iang at pobox dot com