This is a novel and not, I think, a very useful definition of context-sensitive; but à chacun son goût.
The useful practical distinction is that between languages, like C and COBOL, that employ reserved words and languages, like PL/I, that do not. Academic computer scientists like reserved words, which at the price of impediments to growth, make compiler writing marginally easier. Some of the rest of us do not. --jg On 8/28/12, Paul Gilmartin <paulgboul...@aim.com> wrote: > On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:21:14 -0400, John Gilmore wrote: > >>Other people's parsing machinery is, in my experience, usable only for >>context-free 'languages'; and since I devise and use only >>context-sensitive--yes, PL/I-like--languages, I have found that I must >>build my own parsing machinery; and this is easy enough to do using >>REXX. >> > No language that requires identifiers to be declared is context-free, > though some phrases in such languages may be parsed by > context-unaware machinery, usually subject to availability of a > symbol table. In effect, the symbol table converts declared > identifiers to terminal symbols in the parser's view. > > -- gil > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
