Oops. Yes, Knuth not Wirth. Agreed that meta-language that is close to the base language is the easiest to learn and use.
Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 1:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Meta languages [was: RE: Assembler Language Programming for IBM System z Servers] On Mon, 5 Apr 2021 16:30:53 +0000, Farley, Peter x23353 wrote: >True. There is m4 in *ix systems and going back a long time there was ML/1 (I >think there was an academic book published on that one, I think I have a copy >somewhere around here). Undoubtedly others I do not know of or remember. > >Probably also Wirth's "literate programming" suite, TeX I think it is called. > Knuth? >But IMHO none easy to learn or use. > PL/I addresses ease of use by making the metalanguage similar to the base language. My favorite experience was with Mainsail which integrated its metalanguage with its compiler: not "IF DEFINED()" but "IF DECLARED()". And the metalanguage was aware of the language's block structure: the scope of a macro was only the block in which it was defined. There was little syntactic distinction between the SETC and MACRO equivalents. Evaluation of metasymbols could be either performed at the point of macro definition or deferred to the applied occurrence. I understand that BAL had some of that unification; lost in subsequent assemblers which distinguish EQU from SETA. >-----Original Message----- >From: Charles Mills >Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 12:20 PM > >Aren't there "generic" meta languages: meta languages that may be used to >generate any sort of text, including source code for most any language? -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
