Re: Interactive parsing with Bison

[Paul Eggert]

Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:

> I can't believe Paul Eggert can't learn enough C++ to work on Bison.

I'm sure I could learn it better, if I had the time and the need.

> Exactly, that's why I don't propose ML either, nor C# or Java.
>
> But then again, let's agree that moving to C++ is a totally
> different matter.

I don't see why moving to Java would be that much more work than
moving to C++.  The basic code and algorithms would be almost the same
code.  You'd have to change the program structure and headers of
course, and fiddle with the syntax a bit, but you'd need to do that
for C++ anyway, if you wanted to actually _use_ C++.

> one of the first things we would win with C++ is the bitset support.
> We would have lost so much time maintaining it in C.

I'm not sure I agree.  I've done the brunt of that maintenance work
since the code was contributed, and it hasn't been a real problem.

(But anyway, if its bitsets you want, Java's got 'em.  :-)

> M4 is indeed, a problem.  But I'm taking about the front-end of
> Bison, and the backend is irrelevant here.

But the project in question is a backend project.

Now I'm confused about why we're discussing this issue of language
choice.  If you want to generate code that implements an interactive
parser in C++, by all means do so.  Personally, though, I'd rather use
Java.  Or Scheme.  Or Python.  Or ML.  Or Smalltalk.  Or Ruby.  Or
Javascript.  Or ... you get the idea.