On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:47:54 +0200, ezdiy <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello,
D syntax being C-ish one is great for oldschool class of programmers
coming C/C++/Java/C# backgrounds, and although it's quite conscise one
compared to, eg. javas, it's still much on the overly verbose side for
some people (ie. at least for me :)
The question is, how one would go around to successfully implement an
alternative modern syntax to "fix" this. Are there some attempts out
there?
I'm talking among the lines of translators for popular languages such as
Lua (http://moonscript.org/) or Javascript (http://coffeescript.org/).
For statically typed example, take a look at http://live.gnome.org/Genie
for Vala.
My idea is something like: try to keep as much of original D grammar as
possible, but add a lot of syntactic sugar, f.e.:
- strip perceived "bloat" - by default, all variables auto, only basics
of OO (everything virtual and public..) exposed etc...
- python's indentation blocks, instead of {}
- line decorators, such as: a = b if c
- multiple return values (either hack the compiler to have em, or add *a
lot* of boilerplate to the translator to use tuples)
- your ideas?
Another issue is how to go around implementation. My bet is to start
with some already existing 1:1 D translator which has an actual AST
state (is there something like that?) and then try to retrofit it with
as much of the hipster stuff until things start to get overly ambiguous
:)
http://delight.sourceforge.net/
