[bitc-dev] Surface Syntax (again)

[Eric Northup]

Mark Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 8:02 AM, Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap at eros-os.com> wrote:
>   
>> 2. I'm increasingly convinced (however reluctantly) that mixfix is important
>> in a non-sexpr surface syntax.
>>     
> I hate mixfix too. Since your conclusion is already reluctant, perhaps
> if you posted your rationale we could talk you out of it
MarkM beat me to the suggestion.  We looked for and failed to find an 
off-the-shelf parser generator that could be persuaded to do mixfix for 
the Dyna language, and we ended up writing our own.

I think mixfix could be regarded as syntactic sugar to be possibly added 
later, guided by experience using the non-s-expression surface syntax.  
Programmers have real problems with just the standard operator 
precedence rules in C-like languages ('&' vs '==', etc)!  Given that 
BitC is aimed at reliable software development, it seems like making the 
parse of a particular screenful of BitC dependent on the state of the 
current operator table (not visible on the screen) could only serve to 
reduce assurance.

-Eric