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Len,
On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> So syntax is not trivial?
Arghhh, I can't remember any longer.
I think I'm arguing both that it is and that it isn't (clearly, in
another life I was a theologian).
It's trivial in that what really does the work is the thing the syntax
is turned into -- be it SAX stream, Infoset, grove, parse-tree, chip
mask(!) -- and what that was converted _from_ doesn't matter at that
level. So you can make your own choice and the processor doesn't have
to care.
It's non-trivial in the sense that what's on the screen does matter when
you're trying to debug why the parsed thing doesn't work.
[add suitable qualifications to all of that]
So syntax is desparately non-trivial; but because it's also trivial,
that's OK. I think. (clearly, it wasn't one of the more accessible
religions).
The short version: the slogan `syntax is (not) trivial' means too many
different things to be useful.
Ermmm?
Norman
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Norman Gray http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/
Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK norman@astro.gla.ac.uk
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