Re: Unquoted strings in BASIC

[Hans Åberg]

> On 3 Dec 2024, at 17:44, Maury Markowitz <maury.markowitz@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Dec 1, 2024, at 2:07 PM, James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org> wrote:
>> 
>> require some real thinking, never easy.  For example, is
>> 
>> 10100 DATA "one",2B,"three"
>> 
>> valid?  If it is, you'll need one pattern for "leading alpha" that might
>> be just one character, and another for "leading digit" that requires
> 
> On further reflection, it seems it is much easier to parse everything in the 
> data section as a string, and then turn it into a string or number at runtime 
> based on the variable that's reading it. That's how INPUT works, so I can 
> re-use that code.

It might be easier to first write a rule for unquoted strings, and then add a 
start condition when the quote arrives. This parallels the example with 
any_identifier that I gave.

In general, one tries to exploit tokens to do special things, which is also 
useful in a Bison parser when adding mid-rule actions.