On 12/7/15 5:14 AM, Timon Gehr wrote:
D does not allow overloading of syntax to the extent necessary to make similar things really pleasant in the long run, and it has been repeatedly argued that this is a good thing; that custom parsing should be used instead. It is easy to align the parser with D syntax. Anyway, syntax is not the problem here, and the implementation can be downgraded to not support parsing and/or proper names at any point.
I fail to see how no parens after log or "^" in lieu "^^" would make a positive difference. What would be a few examples of things that won't work pleasantly enough?
I'm not sure whether the DSL argument is well applied here. Clearly using D expressions for e.g. regex or SQL syntax would be at best avoided in favor of a DSL. In this case we're defining an algebra over restricted expressions, which are a subset of the usual mathematical expressions that D's syntax already emulates.
Looks like a debate on whether to choose one standard language vs. an obscure one (in this case invented ad-hoc) is starting. This is deja vu all over again :o).
I hope you won't mind if I give your idea a slightly different angle. Andrei
