On Sat, 2006-01-14 at 21:03 -0600, Gregory Woodhouse wrote: [KSB] <...snip...>
> > so they are effectively useless as standards - it's > > much easier to accommodate differences in syntax than it is > > differences > > in semantics. > > I'm not quite sure what you mean here. In fact, one of my major > complaints about the M standard is that it doesn't really touch on > semantic issues at all, except in a very informal way. I'm not > saying > we need complete mathematical rigor, but a reasonably formal > operational semantics would be nice. But be that as it may, I don't > think I agree: syntactic forms without a semantic interpretation > (whether we make it explicit or not) are pointless. The question is > not whether or not you define new semantics but whether or not the > semantics is formally specified. [KSB] I think we're actually in violent agreement! If I had two different syntactic constructs with the same semantics in two M implementations, I could easily code around it. But standardized syntax that doesn't specify common semantics is much harder to deal with. -- Bhaskar ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
