[antlr-interest] translation of $x references in v3.0
Loring Craymer
Loring.G.Craymer at jpl.nasa.gov
Mon May 2 12:45:23 PDT 2005
Ter--
To the user, having two special characters converts the simple question of
"what is a.b.c.d" to "Should I write $a.b.c.d or @a.b.c.d here? For that
matter, what is $a.b.c.d and how does it differ functionally from
@a.b.c.d? And what is @a.b.c.d, anyway?" Unless these are used in wildly
different ways--which seems inconceivable except as a design failing--the
user should only have to worry about one consistent interface to data
(attributes).
Since you are solving the a versus #a problem, I don't think that it makes
sense to introduce a similar but more extreme problem.
--Loring
At 11:38 AM 5/2/2005, Terence Parr wrote:
>On May 1, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Matthew Ford wrote:
>
>>I agree with Loring, and vote for just one prefix. (the backwards
>>compatible switch sounds good too)
>>matthew
>>
>>>In fact, I'd vote against having more than one special character
>>>for attributes in actions: the only feature it provides the user is to
>>>allow duplicate use of names and it complicates the translation mechanism
>>>for the ANTLR backend developer.
>
>Hi Matthew,
>
>My logic is that dynamic attributes are such different critters than
>regular args/return-values/labels attributes that they should be clearly
>marked syntactically as different. I use the "what is a.b.c.d?" argument
>in Java as a case in point. That could be any number of things. We'll
>try it out this Summer and then back it out if everyone hates it. :)
>
>Ter
>--
>CS Professor & Grad Director, University of San Francisco
>Creator, ANTLR Parser Generator, http://www.antlr.org
>Cofounder, http://www.jguru.com
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