[self-interest] Re: Grammar questions

[Stefan Matthias Aust]

Dru,

> I'm working on a parser too. So far, I've only implemented the
>lexer portion. Your recent email on that shows that you have
>discovered how to handle that.

Perhaps I should tell you a little bit more about my program.  I used
VisualWorks smalltalk to implement the parser.  A "SelfScanner" class
implements the scanner (lexer) while a call called "SelfParser" does all
the dirty work.  The scanner provides token/value pairs which are used by
the parser.  With the exception of number tokens, all values are strings
(or symbols, a special kind of constant String in Smalltalk).  The parser
maintains a token-push-back-stack which is needed for looking ahead in the
token stream.

I think the scanner is finished.  The parser still needs work.  I can parse
most SELF expression already, but there's no real code generator yet.  And
of course, I don't know how to deal with expressions and parenthesis!

I actually wrote that parser just out of curiosity.  I wanted to study the
original morphic code and wanted to get rid of all that superfluous
information the original SELF source files are bloaded with.  I thought
perhaps I could write a small program to extract method definitions from
these files.  I incrementally extended this to a whole parser :-)

Now, there's the intriguing idea to add a VM simulator to the system.  I
already create "SelfObject" instances for each method.  Each contains a
number of slots (one of SelfMutableDataSlot, SelfImmutableDataSlot,
SelfAssignerSlot, SelfArgumentSlot and SelfMethodSlot) and a list of
SelfExpression objects, which eventually will hold a parse tree of message
send (and resend) operations.

>As for the longest whitespace, personally that will
>work, but I think that any of the '=-' or ('=' operator) should
>be illegal. 

Well, I just try to implement the grammar. I don't reason about it :-) But
(allow me one thought) if you make '=' an illegal operator, you need
another operator for testing equality.  Because '==' is already used to
test identity, you cannot use this or you need to change the language even
more.  I'm not sure whether this would be a good idea.

>C did this for the same reasons.  '=- 1' vs '= -1' is
>hard to read, the standard '-=' is much easier to read.

As for many other things (perhaps too many) in SELF, this should be
considered as a convention but not a rule expressed in the grammar.
Otherwise I'd agree withh you.

>Thanks for posting your questions (and answers). The info has
>saved me _a_lot_ of time.

You're welcome.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  Are you ready to discover the twilight zone?

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