Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Derek Jones Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Programming language similarity Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2022 08:59:44 +0100 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 18 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <22-04-013@comp.compilers> References: <22-04-012@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="52400"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: design, semantics Posted-Date: 25 Apr 2022 12:17:24 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Content-Language: en-US In-Reply-To: <22-04-012@comp.compilers> Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2979 John, > https://shape-of-code.com/2022/04/24/programming-language-similarity-based-on-their-traits/ > [That seems awfully simplistic.  Fortran and PL/I both have FORMAT statements that look > superficially similar but the semantics are very different. -John] Many keywords have different meanings, e.g., the do keyword in Fortran/C. Even binary operators differ, binary plus for string concatenation. The blog post uses a token based approach, which does not require lots of time to gather the data. A semantics based approach requires lots of head scratching. I made a start by collecting information on function definitions (mostly forms of argument passing). The semantic traits I looked at tended to have a small number of characteristics, so some form of aggregating is needed to create significant differences.