Re: Language grammar opinions

Stephane Bortzmeyer said:
>> I prefer to list the possible declaration types in the grammar, so
>> would prefer the commented-out version of "declaration".
> 
> One of the traps here is that ABNF strinsg are case-INsensitive so
> this would be a problem if we switch to Unicode and it would be
> inconsistent with the (current) rule that in Cosmogol, everything is
> case-sensitive.

I'm aware of this. Yes, it makes the ABNF look slightly nauseating, but
that's a relatively small burden to bear.

[One option would be to define our own extension to ABNF to specify
case-sensitive strings. Um:

    false = !"false"  ; case-sensitive

I might talk to Paul Overell about it, since he's co-author of 4234 and a
colleague.]

>> Only after you see the next token (semicolon or comma or arrow) do
>> you know if this is a declaration with an unknown type, or a
>> transition. This produces a shift/reduce conflict in yacc or other
>> such parser generators.
> More precisely, with LR parsers like the ones generated by Yacc. LL
> parsers do not have the problem.

Only if you fudge around it (and the same can be done with LR parsers).

>> To resolve it, I would suggest reversing the order of declarations to
>> *begin* with the type:
>> 
>>     STATE : alpha, bravo, charlie ;
>
> Why not. It looks like C :-)

A bit, yes. Combined with my proposed syntax for transitions, it means that
you could make the keywords be case-insensitive if you wanted (I'm neither
supporting nor opposing this) because there's no conflict.

>> I see no benefit in restricting the characters in double-quoted
>> names. At the very least, why allow comma and semicolon but not full
>> stop and colon?
> This is completely arbitrary. We should allow at least, square
> brackets (RFC 2960), slashes and < and > (draft on shim6), dots, etc.

Right. So why forbid anything (except " itself and possibly one escape
code)?

-- 
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