Bruce Anderson. Type syntax in the language C: An object lesson in syntactic innovation. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 15(3):21-27, March 1980.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....of similar constructs, better syntactic differentiation of dissimilar constructs, and greater overall readability of code. 1. Motivation It is widely accepted that the syntax of C C , having been evolved over several decades by a large number of contributors, leaves much to be desired [1,2,3]. For example, the declaration syntax which C inherits from C (and extends) is so complicated that it is doubtful whether, without the assistance of a manual or source code example, one in ten C programmers could correctly declare a prototype for fundamental C allocation control function: ....

....even moderately complicated examples (see Appendix A for instance) The result is that the clarity of such declarations is greatly diminished. Within SPECS, this problem is overcome by entirely redesigning the type ID mechanism in a manner similar to (but simpler than) that proposed by Anderson [1]. All declaration operators are prefix, right associative, and are at the same precedence level. Any attached identifiers are separated from the type ID to make them visible. The intention is that the meaning of a type ID can be determined by simply reading it left to right, rather than by subtle ....

Anderson, B., Type Syntax in the Language C: An Object Lesson in Syntactic Innovation, in "Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages: Ada, C, and Pascal", Feuer & Gehani, eds., Prentice-Hall, 1984.

....in languages as expressive as C Algol 68, for example describe objects equally hard to understand, simply because the objects themselves are complex. A second effect owes to details of the syntax. Declarations in C must be read in an inside out style that many find difficult to grasp [Anderson 80] Sethi [Sethi 81] observed that many of the nested declarations and expressions would become simpler if the indirection operator had been taken as a postfix operator instead of prefix, but by then it was too late to change. In spite of its difficulties, I believe that the C s approach to ....

B. Anderson, `Type syntax in the language C: an object lesson in syntactic innovation, ' SIGPLAN Notices 15 (3), March, 1980, pp. 21-27.

....of similar constructs, better syntactic differentiation of dissimilar constructs, and greater overall readability of code. 1. Introduction It is widely accepted that the syntax of C C , having been evolved over several decades by a large number of contributors, leaves much to be desired [1,2,3]. For example, the declaration syntax which C inherits from C (and extends) is so complicated that it is doubtful whether, without the assistance of a manual or source code example, one in ten C programmers could correctly declare a prototype for fundamental C allocation control function: ....

....in even moderately complicated examples (see Appendix A for instance) The result is that the clarity of such declarations is greatly diminished. Within SPECS, this problem is overcome by entirely redesigning the type ID mechanism in a manner similar to (but simpler than) that proposed by Anderson [1]. All declaration operators are prefix, right associative, and are at the same precedence level. Any attached identifiers are separated from the type ID to make them visible. The intention is that the meaning of a type ID can be determined by Page 4 simply reading it left to right, rather than ....

Anderson, B., Type Syntax in the Language C: An Object Lesson in Syntactic Innovation, in "Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages: Ada, C, and Pascal", Feuer & Gehani, eds., Prentice-Hall, 1984.

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Bruce Anderson. Type syntax in the language C: An object lesson in syntactic innovation. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 15(3):21-27, March 1980.

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