Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use?

From	gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use?
Date	2022-12-03 17:15 -0800
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<22-12-006@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<22-12-001@comp.compilers> <22-12-005@comp.compilers>

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On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 4:27:51 PM UTC-8, christoph...@compiler-resources.com wrote:
> The discussion on reserved words versus keywords reminds me of
> decisions we made while building Yacc++. It is worth noting that we
> (both of its developers) worked at Pr1me computer where PL/I dialects
> were the key programming language used in build both the OS and the
> compilers, so we were likely highly influenced by that.

This is reminding me of some cases in TeX where optional keywords can
arise in unexpected places.  There is TeX glue that allows:

\hskip 1cm

or

\hskip 1cm plus 1cm

In normal use, you mix TeX commands and text to be formatted.  If a macro
expands to

\hskip 1cm

and is followed by text starting with

plus

you get a surprising error message.

I believe that plus is only a "reserved word" in that specific context.

And a project I was working on some years ago, just happened to run
into that case, however unlikely that might be.

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What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-01 14:20 -0800
  Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-02 02:09 -0800
  Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2022-12-03 10:25 +0000
    Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-12-03 22:16 +0100
      Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-12-06 09:56 -0800
        Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-06 12:43 -0800
          Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2022-12-07 10:14 +0000
        Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-12-07 12:13 +0100
          Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-12-07 17:53 -0800
            Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-12-08 21:42 +0100
              Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-08 14:44 -0800
                Re: C types, was What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2022-12-09 15:01 +0100
              Re: C types, was What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2022-12-08 18:35 -0800
              Re: C types, was What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-12-09 13:21 +0100
        Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-12 00:00 -0800
      Re: C types, was What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? "marb...@yahoo.co.uk" <marblypup@yahoo.co.uk> - 2022-12-09 07:40 -0800
        Re: C types, was What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2022-12-11 10:45 +0000
        Simple to implement and to use Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-12-11 19:41 +0200
  Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-12-03 23:33 +0000
    Re: What attributes of a programming language simplify its use? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-12-03 17:15 -0800

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