Re: RFC: Extracting the action transformation from the scanner

[Akim Demaille]

>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

 > Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:
 >> - It does introduce some code duplication.

 > Yes, I think that's my biggest worry about this sort of thing. 

Yeah, I understand, and I share your concern.  But in this case there
is not too much duplication.

 > If the refactoring results in a real win that users can see
 > (support for Java, say?), then it might be worth this hassle;
 > otherwise, I'm not sure it's worth the bother.

I have in mind the fact that Perl people complain that $ and @ have a
hardwired meaning.  But I'm not specifically aiming at this right now,
it just seemed nicer to separate concerns.


 > M4 sounded like a nice idea at first, but in retrospect perhaps we
 > should have left well enough alone.  People have submitted
 > replacements (one based on Python, another on Scheme) but I'm not
 > sure they're enough of an improvement to be worth the hassle.

 > Perhaps it'd be better to drop the postprocessor phase entirely; it's
 > nice in some respects, but I'm afraid it's turning out to be more
 > trouble than it's worth.

I strongly disagree here.  I agree programming with strings is hard
enough, M4 managing to beat TCL on its own battle field on this
regard, but returning to some ad hoc treatment would be a serious
regression.

We really want to be able to iterate, to change tokens, to generate
function signatures etc.  Having to perform that from the C engine is
quite wrong IMHO.