Re: Extendable Interpreter

[BStelloh]

In a message dated 2/22/99 6:43:42 PM, Tony Rich wrote:

>The trick is not to let the language get bloated, and to keep some
>sort of simplicity and consistency to the syntax and "spirit"
>of the language.

Yes!. 

I had the good fortune to work for Dr. Maury Halstead, the inventor of the
first self-compiling compiler, NELIAC, back in the '60s. We had heated lengthy
debates on this topic, on how best to add functionality and keep within the
spirit of the language. 
Rule 1: keep the syntactical groundrules few, simple and widely applicaple;
and
Rule 2: any construction meeting the groundrules *must* produce valid
executable code.
Those are good rules for any language. 

The NELIAC rules were analogous to a spoken language: nouns (=operands) and
verbs (=operators), sentences (=statements) and paragraphs (=handlers).

Regards,
Bob Stelloh