OpenEuphoria

Re: WISHLIST.TXT

• Posted by jbrown105 at speedymail.org Aug 24, 2002
• 429 views

On  0, kbochert at copper.net wrote:
> 
> You wrote on 8/24/02 10:53:18 AM:
> 
> >
> >I already have seperated gotos and pointers from rparse into gparse (it
> >seems
> >that rparse's method of handling variables is required in order to get
> >gotos
> >to function correctly), unforutantly the outputed code is still ugly
> >and
> >it is not 1:1 with the source code (with something like an emulated
> >goto thats
> >flat out impossible). As a compromise I'm adding code to output the
> >original
> >line numbers as comments to both rparse and gparse.
> >
> 
> That might help some but I still think a preproccesor has a hard row
> to hoe here. The user still has to find the reported error in the
> preprocessed code and then translate back to what in the original
> code caused it. Its a nuisance that get worse as the preprocessor
> becomes more powerful. Even with a 1:1 preprocessor like Goo I
> found it hard to get used to.
> 
> For large-scale additions, a modified interpreter seems to have
> insurmountable advantages: speed, error messages where they belong,
> complex features hidden in simple syntax and so forth.
> 
> I think the best use for a preprocessor is to provide syntactic sugar
> -- new features like goto, exceptions etc. will always be problematical.
> 
> Karl Bochert
> 

Speed is the largest unsolvable problem wiht a preprocessor. If it were
to output pure euphorian code, then it'd be tough to speed it up. I
don't plan to
address this issue in rparse until it becomes too large a problem to be
ignored.

As for error messages, I'll make rparse smarter so it catches more
errors at
compile time, as well as writing an rparse.err file. Also, I'll work on
a
utility which will automaticly try to convert an ex.err file to a
rparse.err
file. This should make it MUCH easier to debug rparse programs.

The next release of rparse which feature red, which will have builtin
support
for all of these features. red, for rparse ed, will be the native
editor for
rparse programs. Finally, to address the biggest issue, I am willing
to take suggestions from this list for a new name.

While a modified interpreter does have many advantages, I still have
two
excuse for liking preprocessors written in pure Eu better: First, what
language
is better and easier to use than Euphoria? Second, How many modified
interpreters
run on linux?

jbrown


--