1. Assorted ideas...

Hello all,

  I thought you all Euphoria people would like to know about this. I'm an
assistant teacher in a computer science course for my university here in
Argentina, it dealing with algorithmics and complexity theory (hehe... how
many of you have "suffered" it? ;) ). Thing is the course requires a good-size
lab assignment, and we're planning to use Euphoria as the suggested language
for it (yes, suggested... you can't fight against C fans, you know, ugh).
Well, about this, I was wondering if someone of you users or most probably
those creative guys at RDS have a formal definition of the syntax of the
language? I mean a BNF, EBNF, CFG. This would be useful because my students
are familiar with that way of approaching syntactic issues and they will
find it easier to learn the language with such a reference besides the manual.
Just wondering...

  Does this means we down here in 3rd world are going to buy LOTS of copies
of the language and make RDS rich? Sorry, Mr. Craig, I'm afraid our budget
doesn't allow it, as much as you deserve it for your great work. Seems I'll
be lucky if I get a registered copy for myself :( Well, there IS a reason
for the name "3rd world" you know hehe...

  Since it could prove very useful for the work of my students here, I'm
planning to create a cross-referencer for Euphoria. Whenever I get some beta
working I'll send it to the RDS guys for them to put in their homepage if they
want, and probably in my homepage as soon as I can get some spare time to
work on the damn thing ;) The BNF definition could help me a lot to get
the xref program right a bit faster, so you know...

  So now... to add myself to all the wishing I've read lately here ;) I add
mines, some of which I already expressed before.

1) symbolic atoms (you need too many constants, gets confusing sometimes)
2) support for enumerated types consisting of symbolic atoms (Mr. Craig already
   explained this would be difficult, but I don't miss nothing for asking
   again ;) )
3) a slightly improved editor (hey it's quite good, but I'll like to see
   simple backup facilities, easier paste/cut method, and true multi-windowing
   edition, just that!)
4) the case statement could be useful, but not sure... the approach of using
   a preprocessor Mr.Cuny is following seems ok for me. Just extending it
   could do, so the language keeps being simple and only the ones who find
   a preprocessor desirable would use the new statements.

  Ok, that's all for now. Thanks for your attention and feel free to reply
if you want to. Bye.

gonzalia at criba.edu.ar
Carlos Gonzalia, Artificial Intelligence Research Group, Universidad Nacional
del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina, South America.

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2. Assorted ideas...

Carlos Jose Gonzalia writes:

> Thing is the course requires a good-size
> lab assignment, and we're planning to use Euphoria as the suggested language
> for it (yes, suggested... you can't fight against C fans, you know, ugh).

That's great to hear. I'll be happy to answer any questions you
might have.

> Well, about this, I was wondering if someone of you users or most probably
> those creative guys at RDS have a formal definition of the syntax of the
> language? I mean a BNF, EBNF, CFG. This would be useful because my students
> are familiar with that way of approaching syntactic issues and they will
> find it easier to learn the language with such a reference besides the manual.
> Just wondering...

We don't have a BNF or other syntactic specification.
I'm too busy right now on v1.5 to create one,
although it shouldn't be too hard - the core language is
syntactically very small and easy to parse. If one
of your students creates one based on refman.doc
I can check it and report any errors to you.

Regards,
  Rob Craig
  Rapid Deployment Software

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