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Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language?

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> I am working with a team to develop a new language and our current thinking is
> that the language will use the XPath language for navigating through documents
> and the CSS language for expressing sets of match/action pairs.

That feels like a much more tractable problem. Don't even think of it
as a multi-language language. It's a language you're designing (so you
have lots of room for maneuver) around XPath.

> This idea of multi-language languages is very common within the XML community.
> For example, the XSLT language uses (hosts) the XPath language. Here is an
> excerpt to illustrate:
>
> select="/Bookstore/Book[1]/Title"
>
> The expression /Bookstore/Book[1]/Title is an XPath expression, the other
> parts are XSLT. So, the format of the select statement is:
>
> select="XPath"
>
> See how XSLT hosts XPath? That is, one language (XSLT) is using another
> language (XPath).

Yeah, putting a second language inside the string literals of the
first is a very common approach. All the tooling for the outer
language can remain oblivious of the second. You don't even need to
design a new language, this approach works with any existing one, and
you can focus on implementing a library to process XPath.

If you do want to design another language, however, you can make things a lot nicer. For example:

- any URL is a valid literal in the Red programming language: https://github.com/red/docs/blob/master/en/datatypes.adoc
- the JSX extension of JavaScript used in the React framework permits component literals that look a lot like some sort of markup language: https://reactjs.org/docs/introducing-jsx.html

Kartik
http://akkartik.name/about

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How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-03-03 13:57 +0000
  Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-03-05 22:29 +0000
    Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? "Kartik Agaram" <ak@akkartik.com> - 2022-03-05 16:55 -0800
    RE: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-03-06 15:37 +0200
      Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-03-06 14:36 -0800
        Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-03-06 16:50 -0800
      RE: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-03-06 23:32 +0000
  Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-03-05 21:10 -0800
    Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2022-03-07 13:39 +1100
  Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-03-06 12:23 +0100
    Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-03-07 05:08 +0100
      Re: How do you create a grammar for a multi-language language? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-03-06 21:22 -0800
        Keywords and Reserved Words Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-03-08 21:46 +0200
          Re: Keywords and Reserved Words gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-03-09 00:31 -0800
            Re: Keywords and Reserved Words "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2022-03-10 10:00 +1100
          Re: Keywords and Reserved Words "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2022-03-10 09:55 +1100
            Re: Keywords and Reserved Words in Fortran Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2022-03-10 07:07 +0000
          Re: Keywords and Reserved Words "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2022-03-10 11:59 +1100

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