[bitc-dev] Current thoughts on mixfix

[wren ng thornton]

On 9/2/10 2:23 PM, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> *First-Class Syntax*
>
> The evident *problem* with my view is that you sometimes (lexically) inherit
> operator bindings or precedence choices that don't work for your specialized
> embedded language, and there isn't really a way to get rid of them. It seems
> to me that the right solution here is to introduce a notion of a "syntax
> table", so that you can write something like:
>
>      with syntax *mySyntax*
>        *sequence of forms*
>
> The interpretation of a mixfix introduction is that it modifies the current,
> lexically-prevailing syntax.

I don't know that anything has been published on it, but you should talk 
with Jason Eisner about Jay's parser for Dyna. It does a lot of this 
sort of chicanery, so they've charted the territory at least.

There's also the caml4p approach which I think is horrific, since it 
makes it trivial to break the syntax of the language and almost 
impossible to do anything non-trivial without breakage. That's why my 
Coq code is all done in S-expressions whenever possible. It's an 
anti-pattern to bear in mind.

-- 
Live well,
~wren