The problem with the MFC syntax is that he used a character for options
(the square brackets) that were not a part of classic Rexx. With ooRexx I
think it would be confusing since square brackets are a part of the
character set.

But I am open to other ideas and alternatives. I am not much of a fan of
the railroad diagrams either.

Thanks,
W. David Ashley
IBM Systems and Technology Group Lab Services
Open Object Rexx Team
Mobile Phone: 512-289-7506



                                                                       
             "Rick McGuire"                                            
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             08/24/2008 10:29                                      Subject
             AM                        [Oorexx-devel] Railroad tracks in
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I've never been a big fan of railroad track diagrams for syntax
diagrams, but they were an IBM standard so they sort of got imposed on
the Object Rexx docs.  Now that I've had to update a few of these, I'm
even less of a fan of these.  I find them hard to read, hard to
update, and easy to get wrong.  I much prefer the simpler syntax that
MFC used in TRL.  For example, here's the railroad track diagram for
OVERLAY()

>>-OVERLAY(new,target------------------------------------------->

>--+---------------------------------------+--)----------------><
   +-,--+---+--+-------------------------+-+
        +-n-+  +-,--+--------+--+------+-+
                    +-length-+  +-,pad-+

vs. Mike's syntax in TRL:

OVERLAY(new,target[,[n][,[length][,pad]]])

This is much easier to scan from left-to-right to see what arguments
are optional, and is also easier to update to add additional
arguments.  Anybody else in favor of changing this?

Rick

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